Talk To Her
by thesocketpuppet
Summary: Pearl and Amethyst are fuck buddies. Amethyst tries to talk to Pearl about the whole thing. College AU Pearlmethyst, NSFW but this story is 9 parts plot and 1 part short-lived steamy scenes. Features a relationship between Amethyst and Pearl, and various friendships between Amethyst, Peridot, Garnet, and Lapis Lazuli. More of a slice-of-life relationship fic.
1. sunrise

_Amethyst had been told by her father that getting laid was harder than it looked._

Ame _, he'd said, as the boy and the girl made out on the TV screen._ Y'both have to want it.

 _Amethyst had been maybe twelve and disinterested in the whole thing. (It might have been because she preferred girls.)_

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She wakes up in the morning after having sex, yet again, at a party. They were drunk, horny, and there was a spare bed upstairs.

This isn't the first time, or the second, or the third time, but at least this time Amethyst gets a good look at her bed mate. In the morning light, sober and not unkind, Pearl's face is like any other person's – spots here and there on her face, mussed hair, a slight frown on her features.

 _Ah!_ She'd said the first morning after they'd hooked up. _My face is puffy in the morning_.

She'd buried her face under a pillow and Amethyst made swift escape, not knowing morning-after etiquette. She still doesn't know, really, if this is normal, this getting up and disappearing, either on her side or Pearl's. No breakfast, no awkward discussions after a good banging, no discussion about what they liked or didn't.

But then, they aren't friends. Maybe those things only happen in romance novels.

And also they're drunk every time they fuck. And also, it's how Amethyst likes it, uncomplicated and simple.

Either way, it's nice to see Pearl without the drunken haze, wrapped up in someone else's blankets, quite naked underneath them. Her tits are so tiny Amethyst's hands cover the whole breast. She'd wake her up, and give 'em a squeeze, but this isn't a romance novel and Pearl would flee to the bathroom. Morning breath and puffy faces and oily skin, all on display to the underclassman she'd been fucking. What a huge crime, Amethyst thinks sarcastically, as though she could say that to Pearl.

She can't, because she doesn't know anything about the mysterious Pearl, and because Amethyst is a fucking chicken when she's sober.

 _Bawk, bawk, bawk,_ she tells herself, opening the door and running away.

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Sometimes, Amethyst thinks about sex with Pearl.

Actually, that's a lie. She thinks a lot about sex with Pearl. She's a horny, horny bitch, okay? And she likes licking Pearl's pussy, or pounding her, or anything really. She especially likes making Pearl moan. She's thinking about it now, in the middle of class. She can't help herself. It's getting colder and colder these days. What do you do when it's cold? You fuck someone, especially when the weather's nice and good for it.

She wants to try talking to Pearl, but she needs guts to pull that off. She's always wanted to try talking dirty to someone. Being sober makes the whole thing mortifying, but being drunk just means – pounding and pounding and licking till that final tension. Which is fine, but Amethyst considers herself a creative sort of person. There are more ways to fuck a person with her tongue. She'd like to try all those out.

The thing is, of all the upperclassmen to end up fucking, it has to be that white chick Lapis knows of. There's some kind of history behind that, but everyone's like, _oh, it was way before you went to this university,_ like she's a kid. But she'll always be a kid to Lapis. Her ex-girlfriend's little sister, the one that _didn't_ turn out like Jasper.

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"I need it really hard today," Pearl groans out.

Amethyst's fingers are deep inside of her; for good measure, Ame pumps a little sharper than usual.

It's not every day Pearl says anything apart from _yes, fuck me_ , and a bunch of other short things.

"Rough week?"

"Ah! Yes… please."

"Please what?"

"Fuck me. Fuck me hard… please."

Amethyst has never really wanted a dick. She likes being a girl. But when Pearl talks like that, when she feels Pearl clench her fingers tight inside, not wanting to let go, as intimate as an embrace – she wonders what it would be like to be a guy. To have her fingers as sensitive as a guy's cock.

On top of Pearl, Amethyst chugs away. _What a fuckin' trooper,_ she thinks to herself, zoning out and in. She wants this, right? Feeling the sudden clench on her fingers, the constant sound of slickness sliding back and forth, she forgets her last thought.

/*\

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Her head stays in a daze longer than usual after that

"Hey, lovergirl," Lapis says, snapping her out of her thoughts. "What's going on in there?"

"Lapis," Amethyst says, not thinking, "how do two drunk people get laid?"

Lapis is not the right person to ask this question to, and talking about it at the university café at broad daylight is not the right place or time either.

Lapis raises an eyebrow. "Dude, are you awake?"

"No, I guess not," Amethyst says, backtracking quickly.

"Ugh, you can't just… ask a stupid question and run away from it. What were you trying to say?"

"So, like, uh, consent," she says, and she winces at the word, "like, how does that work when you're both drunk?"

Lapis throws her head back and laughs. Hard. Amethyst glances around, but everyone else is too busy with their own exams.

"You're nothing like your sister," Lapis says, with the kind of amusement that she uses to lock up the past.

 _Your nothing like your sister_ is not a compliment Amethyst wants to have. Not at the extent of Jasper.

Lapis seems to read that on her face. Quickly, Amethyst tries to smile, a white flag over things that happened before.

"You're not supposed to hit on anyone when you're drunk," Lapis says. "But some people want to get laid while drunk. I guess if the agreement is made before that, it's fine. And if you stop when you're told to."

Amethyst puts a hand to her chin, stroking it. "Eh," Lapis says, "aren't you kind of exhibit A for that sorta thing?"

 _Yeah,_ Amethyst agrees, but doesn't say. _I just don't know if this is a good thing or not._

Lapis is so sure she's not like Jasper, the faith is as heavy as her sister's shadow is black.

They drop off into silence for a while, sipping at their coffee.

"I've never spoken to Pearl sober," Amethyst says. "I mean, like, we never say anything sober. To each other."

"There wouldn't be much to say," Lapis says. "She's a real nerd."

So, that was it? Fuck me hard, thank you and good bye? What Amethyst doesn't get it why she wants to _talk._ Her, of all people, talk to Pearl Watterson. Pearl isn't the kind of person she'd ever get along with. (And vice versa on Pearl's end, she's sure.) The sex is fine, because it's just fooling around, and honestly, in the first few parties it could have been anyone, but this semi-permanent thing of getting drunk and getting laid had to be discussed at some point, right?

Maybe there's some kind of unspoken adult rule about this that she doesn't know. _We don't talk about the Fight Club_ , she watched on a movie. Maybe it's the same thing here. _We don't talk about the sex club_.

Lapis disrupts her thoughts. "Hey, if it bothers you so much, you can just say no, y'know. Just not turn up to the party. She's not like, being weird is she?"

"She isn't!" Amethyst says quickly. _I'm the one being weird._

Amethyst skips out on the next party. There are other things to tire her out, and she can take care of herself.

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She's given in to another house party, comes in, smiles as usual, takes the beer, runs straight for the pool, where she can sit down and dip her feet, ankle-deep, into the water.

She breathes in: it's the sharp, reassuring smell of chlorine.

Live music wafts from the inside of the house. Someone's gotten a hold of a sax player and a band. The sax croons, slides, goes running up and down the stairs, crying over a lost love in the evening rain. Amethyst snorts. Who let the hipsters in? Everyone was nodding their heads like they suddenly grew a brain. She'd rather they raised their hands and all said _this is the night_ or _time of our lives_ or something, just not this. This shit sounds like it could turn beer into wine. Resurrect the sins of the past and forgive 'em all. Amethyst growls at the thought. It makes her skin crawl, for no reason at all. She lifts her feet out of the water. This is not her scene, these kids sticking blotter paper into their tongues. _It's called getting high!_ She wants to shout. These kids were all likely to say _we're looking for altered states of consciousness_ like her Psych 101 professor explained kids used to say.

Ugh.

"Lapis," she mutters into the phone, outside, a good distance away from the party she should never have entered, "Can't a lady have a beer in peace? What is this shit?"

"Hey," Lapis snaps, "You said, _I need a party_ , you didn't specify which kind."

"Can't I just hang out at your place?"

"Buy me a six-pack," Lapis mutters. "And make me breakfast."

Lapis never hears the reply to that, because right in front of Amethyst is Pearl, her arms folded on Garnet Jones's.

"Woah," she says. "Hi."

"Howdy," Garnet says, passing through with Pearl. They go right on in, and Amethyst turns the call off, cellphone barely held by limp fingers, her whole body weak in the knees.

 _That fucking skirt,_ she thinks to herself, _that fucking skirt,_ she thinks twice now, and then she doesn't think at all of anything coherent, just her large hands covering Pearl's thighs and fucking her cowgirl style on any available surface. The clothes come off magically in that quick daydream (nightdream?) and it's just the two of them, and god, Pearl's haircut makes Ame want to pull at it.

The beer she's still holding onto in her other hand suddenly tastes good. Organic microbrew craft beer or not.

"Fuck," she thinks, remembering Garnet Jones. Why were all the athletes so trim? Why was she so flabby? Why was she two years younger than Pearl? Why was Pearl folding her hands with Garnet? Why couldn't Lapis just talk about whatever drama once went on when they were freshmen?

 _You need a drink, gurl,_ she thinks to herself. _Steal from the hipsters and give to yourself. Your sorry ass self._

She marches right back in.

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Amethyst and Pearl hanging out at opposite ends of the room is nothing new. It's usually when they're both drunk and horny that they end up mashing their faces together – that stage of drunkenness where anyone will do and you're just in need of a break. That's how this entire thing started out. They were sitting on a couch, talking to people, everyone was drunk, Pearl moved more and more into her space to make room for other people, eventually ending up onto her lap; they were quickly introduced, and then they were making out. Amethyst never loved college more than she did that night ( _Fuck yes! I got laid!_ It's the sort of euphoria you feel for fitting in, for seeing yourself reflected in the movies and the TV shows – and of course, the sex. Pearl's nose rubbed against her clit in ways she was too lazy to do with her fingers. That was good. Very good.)

It doesn't look like that nose is going to be buried in her snatch anytime soon.

"Guh," she grumbles from the breakfast bar.

"Y'don't look so good today," Jenny says, sidling up next to her.

 _I wanna get to know my fuck buddy but now she's got a girlfriend or something and I'm never even going to talk to her ever._

"Finals," Amethyst says. "And also student debt."

"Heavy stuff."

They drink in silence. Jenny doesn't drink too fast, so neither does Amethyst.

It's the classy music that's slowing them down.

"So are those two together or what?" Amethyst says of Pearl and Garnet, hoping that Jenny buys into her bullshit.

"Pearl and Garnet? Don't think Garnet's into relationships, hun. Pearl's just the clingy type when it comes to her."

"Wait, so, they're just friends?"

"I know right, what a waste. They look so good together."

Amethyst slumps forward on the counter, her face buried in her forearms. "Yeah," she has to agree, the sound muffled by her sweater. She doesn't even have to drink till Pearl's pretty, or Garnet either.

She's never had to drink till Pearl's pretty. If you ask Amethyst, beer goggles is a bullshit reason to drink. It's because guys are fucking chicken, like her.

"I hate this beer," she says, so that Jenny doesn't ask what's wrong.

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She walks out the door at maybe three in the morning. She needs to pee and the bathroom's been locked for twenty minutes and there's no way she's going to use it after the fucking that's likely going on inside.

Eyes on the sidewalk, she bumps against a taller figure.

"Uphf," she grumbles. "Sorry," she says, not bothering to look at whoever it is.

"Are you alright?"

A hand taps her from behind. Amethyst knows that voice, but raises her head anyway. Garnet Jones, the douche that wears shades in the dark, Pearl's perfect complement.

"What's with those shades, dude?" Amethyst asks, not kindly. "It's like, three in the morning."

"Her eyes are sensitive to any light," Pearl answers from next to Garnet, and Amethyst's stomach sinks at the slight reprieve in Pearl's voice.

"Yeah? That sucks." She moves to walk past them.

"It's quite late," Garnet says.

"My dorm's just fifteen minutes away," Amethyst says, irritated at the concern. "I need to pee, so I'ma run off yeah?"

"You can crash at our house," Garnet offers. "Freshmen shouldn't be out walking so late."

"I ain't a frosh, okay? Geez."

But Garnet insists and Amethyst doesn't have a choice, between the moving pavement and bladder.

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She wakes some hours later, after dashing to Garnet's bathroom and later on crashing on the couch. It's five in the morning, and glass bowls are rattling, distant at first, but as she wakes, she realizes she's just a few feet away from the kitchen. Pearl pays her no mind, focused on measuring flour and milk and eggs.

Amethyst sits up and breathes in. _Morning has broken,_ her foggy mind says, _it's broken like the first dawn._

She breathes in vanilla. She breathes in the cold morning air. She blinks at the light starting to stream through the curtains. Outside is a flat landscape of the campus, trimmed grass and a lakeside view. She can smell the lake from here, now that she's not drunk or running away like she always is.

"Morning," she says, her voice raspy. Her breath probably stinks, her face is shiny with all the morning oil, her hair is sticking up, and for all she knows, her face is puffy too.

"Good morning," Pearl says, without turning to her.

Amethyst clears her throat at the sight of Pearl, still wearing her turtleneck from last night. "I was a little shit last night," Amethyst says. "Thanks for putting up with me." Ame's eyes trail up and down Pearl's body, so thin and angular. She's changed from a skirt to shorts though, and her pale legs go on forever.

"It's Garnet you should be thanking," Pearl says, mixing the batter. Amethyst leans back into the couch, still recovering, watching as Pearl fires up the stove and ladles the pancake mix onto the non-stick pan.

"Yeah," Amethyst agrees. She blinks a few times, tells herself to get up. Quietly picks up the plates and puts them on the breakfast bar. Checks the ref and puts out the orange juice. The two of them wordlessly set the food and sit to eat.

Amethyst gets a good view of Pearl's face. "You didn't sleep at all?" She's still wearing makeup.

"I have a hard time sleeping," Pearl says with a shrug.

"Is it 'cuz there's a guest?"

"Eat," Pearl says impatiently. "It's fine."

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Pearl heats up water for her tea. Amethyst pokes around the cupboards for instant coffee. Drinks in hand, they walk out to the porch. They sit at the opposite ends of the bench, in the morning quiet.

"Great pancakes," she says.

"Thank you."

Amethyst looks over at Pearl, who has finished steeping her tea. Her sharp profile, her long fingers, the way she has to do things just so – Amethyst wishes that she could say something, anything, about how she liked those things about Pearl.

 _Say your piece already, man!_

"I've been wanting to talk to you," Amethyst starts, her eyes going down to her own coffee. "Like, why do you have to run off every morning, or hide your face, or, I dunno. Like, do you even… feel good when we do it?"

"Feel good…" Pearl says thoughtfully. "I wouldn't be sleeping with you so consistently if I didn't."

The more they talk, the more Amethyst doesn't want to drink coffee with her. They're not on the same page with this whole thing, that much is obvious. Pearl finds Amethyst good for a romp in the evening. That Amethyst doesn't feel the same way is a bad joke she's played on herself.

"I," Amethyst starts, "I like making you feel good. I mean, you like being bossed around, and you like it rough, and I know how wet you get, but, like, why are we… drunk all the time?" Pearl being drunk doesn't really add up to Lapis's curt description: _that one's a nerd._

Pearl swirls the tea idly with her teaspoon. "Huh," she says, and the morning shadows cast a light on her eyebags. "I drink because I can't sleep. And the sex is a nice distraction. Mechanical release."

"Is that all sex is to you?"

"Isn't that what it is to _you_?"

Pearl takes a sip of her tea, like this is normal morning conversation.

"It isn't," Amethyst says. She puts down her coffee on the arm of the bench, afraid that she'll burn herself. Her hands are shaking, so she puts them down on the bench, gives them something to hold. "I don't know. I just think, it's more than that. I think I kind of like you."

"Don't say that on the strength of a surprisingly compatible sexual relationship."

"Y'keep making it sound unsexy."

"I," Pearl says quietly, "am not a sexy person to be with."

"Neither am I."

They sip at their drinks for a while, warming themselves like cats looking for a spot of sun.

Amethyst: "Do you hook up a lot?"

Pearl: "No."

"Why'd you sleep with me then?"

"Because I was sitting on your lap, and you looked cute and you were willing."

"Were you horrified the morning after?"

"I was wondering the same thing. I have awful morning breath."

"So does everybody else. But I wouldn't sleep with 'em, y'know, or be cool with 'em if they turned me out of the door because they're so worried about their face."

"It's puffy in the morning."

"Do you ever take that makeup off?"

"I forget, which is why I have zits. Which is why I need the makeup. It's a cycle." Pearl pauses for a moment. "I won't kick you out of the room next time, then. If you'll want to stay."

"I wanna cuddle next time," Amethyst says, blushing when the words come out.

"You'll change your mind when I start elbowing you in the face."

"You did that already. And you've kneed me in the gut."

"Sorry," Pearl says, suddenly folding her lanky limbs.

"I like it," Amethyst mutters. "You were ticklish that time."

"Not drunk enough," is Pearl's explanation.

"Do you have to be drunk to have sex?"

"Most of the time, yes."

"Isn't that bad?"

"It makes me less difficult. And I need to drink to sleep, anyway."

 _Makes me less difficult._ What kind of answer was that?

"It's hard for me to have sex sober. I'm not very comfortable and I have a hard time coming when I'm aware I'm taking too long for the person I'm sleeping with. It gets… tiring. For my partner."

Shit, it's seven in the morning and they're both hung over and this is a bit much.

"So," Pearl says. "Reconsidered your offer?"

"This isn't a negotiation," Amethyst says.

She's decided: _Makes me less difficult_ is not something she wants to hear.

"I like it," Pearl says. "When we're sleeping together. The alcohol is just… a necessary evil."

"I'd rather fuck you sober."

"Good luck with that."

"Then I'd rather not fuck you at all, if I had to screw you drunk all the time."

"So you're reconsidering… _this_." Pearl gestures to the two them in large, circular motions.

"No way! … If you want it, that is."

Amethyst's coffee is cold. Pearl's out of tea. The morning lake breeze wafts by, and there is no better time to cuddle than this, but Amethyst sits in her corner until she's told she can move any closer.

"I do like you, Amethyst," Pearl says. "Although that sounds stupid. I don't know anything about you."

"Well, you will," Amethyst says.

"I wish I brushed my teeth." Pearl looks like she'd apologize. What the hell for? For being like every other human being that has morning breath?

"Just come here and kiss me already."

It's the chastest kiss Amethyst has ever had in her life. Lips tightly shut, eyes closed, it's like two kids just figuring out what kissing is.

 _Is this it? Is this it?_

It could be a lot more, she thinks to herself. They have a lot to work on.

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 _fin_

 _Comments, concrit, and anything really are greatly appreciated. I hope you guys enjoyed this. You can check out my tumblr (ateliersockpuppet) for more. Cheers yall._


	2. high noon

AN: I wasn't sure if continuing this is a good idea. Let me know what you think, please.

/

* * *

 **LOW VALLEY**

/

/

Lapis doesn't have a floordrobe. She doesn't have a stack of books to read, or a kitchen full of instant noodles. She has a mattress, which is the only thing that smells human in her apartment. Her low table and closet both look like they came right off a magazine picture. Before Amethyst gets herself sopping drunk in Lapis's sanctuary, she allows herself to wonder if Lapis is okay or what, because there's something deeply fucked when a college student's room is this clean.

That being said, Amethyst has no problem bringing booze into Lapis's apartment and messing it up, along with Peridot in tow. Little freshman nerd is having none of the beer, though. Amethyst is well-attuned to Peridot's quirks; when they first met in high school Amethyst would have passed her rum coke and all the good stuff but Lapis said _don't bother._

 _"What the hell does she drink then?"_

 _"Water."_

 _"Are you fuckin' serious?"_

 _"You stand a zero percent chance of convincing her to do anything. You can't make Peridot do whatever she doesn't want to do. She's that kind of nerd."_

Back to the present: lame-o frosh or not, Amethyst has a good time anyway, sharing half the mattress with Lapis, listening to Peridot play on her chunky Nintendo. Maybe it's the booze, but the Nintendo looks like a piece of toast.

They bounce through topics: college deadlines, latest TV shows (how Lapis keeps up is a mystery to Amethyst), the latest convenience store that opened up. They briefly consider mixing the different flavors of beer on hand, but get too lazy to bother.

The drunker she gets, the more her mind wanders. It doesn't help that she's lying on Lapis's bed, head atop a fluffy pillow, eyes closed. If she raises her forearms, she can imagine Pearl's there, with her short hair tickling Amethyst's chin, with her head buried in the crook of Amethyst's neck. And then Amethyst would trace her fingers along the side of Pearl's torso till that sweet spot where her shirts (always the hanging sort) ended and her shorts hadn't yet begun, and Amethyst's finger would creep in, tuck itself under Pearl's shirt with the intent to trace, and then hold, and then explore. First just a finger and then her hands, both of them, and later the rest of her body: tongue and legs getting tangled into the mix. She'd rev up like a fucked up car, accelerating towards desire, hot and electric and wet, a strange feeling of wanting to consume and wanting to meld, both anchored to Pearl for stability and yet trying to contain someone that might slip away –

Shit. It is fucked up. Just thinking of Pearl makes her horny, and this isn't even the time or place for it. She only wants Pearl because they'd fought and the fight's been bled out of her by the beer and Amethyst has no idea what's left.

She snaps her eyes open, hurt by the harsh light and angry at the sudden burst of music from Peridot's goddamn rhythm game. She gets up and kicks an empty beer bottle across Lapis's pristine room. _Pwing, pwing, pwing!_ It bounces; Lapis takes notice, and Amethyst jabs the main light switch off. There's still the light from the lantern next to Amethyst's mattress, so who cares?

"What the hell, Amethyst?"

Peridot's the one that asks: "How are things with that girlfriend of yours?"

Amethyst turns in time to see Lapis's head snap straight to her. "What the fuck. No. No you're not dating Pearl."

Heh, Amethyst thinks. She's been dating Pearl for two months. Lapis would have known if she were actually around more often. Senior's always off to somewhere, though.

"Can you shut up and let Ame talk?"

That shuts Lapis up. Honestly, that shuts Amethyst up too. Peridot doesn't glance up from her game as she says any of this, her stylus tapping and swooshing across the screen in time to the offbeat of some in-game march.

 _Ha! Ha! Ha!_ The chant repeats over and over, the sound filling up the apartment.

Amethyst slumps down and leans on the wall. Sitting on the hardwood floor has never been a problem for her. "She and i kinda... had a fight."

"Over what?"

For a split second, Amethyst has no idea which way to go: all out or lost and confused. The drinks sloshing around in her gut answers for her.

"Well it's super confusing! Like, here we are, on the goddamn bed, finally NOT drunk, so she comes on to ME right, but then she's like, oh shit, _I haven't done the dishes,_ \- you know what she's saying? She's saying we need a fucking TOWEL _so we don't come on the sheets_... like - fucking really? Fucking ... what?"

Ame trails off. In her drunken state, her head lolls to the side. Peridot's blushing, the light on her Nintendo giving her away.

Tack, tack... tack. Peridot misses a beat and tries to make up for it by tapping madly.

 _God,_ Amethyst thinks to herself, Peridot's such a kid sometimes. She's got this whole _I'm a robot_ thing going on. _She's going to be disappointed when she finds out she's just as human as the rest of us,_ Amethyst thinks.

In front of her, sitting up on the matress, Lapis speaks. "It can be pretty scary sometimes without a little push, y'know. Even if y'want it."

Amethyst slouches a little less. "Wasn't expecting that from you."

"You came here for my expert drunken-master advice. Here it is."

"Yeah, I'm totally scary. I get that."

"I was _saying_ the concept of it – ya know, sex – is what's freaky."

"Well how do you know it's not the concept of _me_?"

Lapis considers this by opening and closing her mouth.

"Well if she didn't like you she wouldn't be trying it with you?" Lapis shakes her head. "Jesus. Why don't you _ask_ her."

"You don't think I try!? It's like pulling teeth or trying to catch a – a skittish bird."

"Ooh," Peridot says. "Never thought you had that in your vocabulary."

It's Pearl's fault for making Amethyst read books.

They're quiet for a moment.

"The only thing I remember about Pearl, back when the athletic teams were kinda close and doing all those crazy parties, is that she was... well, she was always with someone. You know. She was the kind of girl who always had a girlfriend. Guys liked her too, but y'can't hide how gay she is. Anyway, I... I can't really help you figure her out, because I was busy with – with – your goddamned sister. Not apologizing."

"Yeah, yeah," Amethyst says.

"And besides that," Lapis mutters, "it ain't my job to keep track of everyone in my batch."

"Not your job to keep tabs on everyone in your batch? You sure? You knew right away who was pregnant when that rumor came out," Peridot said with a smirk.

"Can you please learn how to get hammered already so that I can tolerate your presence?"

"No, drinking's for losers. Don't you know alcohol destroys brain cells?"

"By that logic, I have brain cells to spare, Peri-dork, because I'm smart," Lapis says smugly.

Amethyst asks for a beer. Lapis rolls her one. The sweat off the beer leaves a track of water on the floor. Lapis would say gross, Amethyst knows, but she's too out of it.

Amethyst keeps drinking. She's passed the pleasant buzz, gone into the low valley, and if she keeps chugging away, she'll pass out into oblivion, into a dreamless sleep, and into a morning with a headache, bad enough to keep her forgetting.

* * *

Amethyst should know by now that drinking sessions are mostly useless, doubly so when it's Lapis, Lapis's wuss of a cousin, and her. Having never done a relationship 'right' (or wrong, actually), Amethyst has no idea what comes after walking out of a not-sex session.

Geez, she thinks to herself, it's not like she can google what to do.

Hm, she thinks to herself, she could make a burner account and check out one of those forums...

No, no, no, she thinks in reply. It loses context when you ask strangers, right? They're all going to jump on her, or Pearl, and nothing's going to work.

Back to the present, she slaps herself gently on the cheek. She hasn't spoken to, or texted Pearl, since walking out of Pearl's room (after picking up her clothes, of course. She'd dressed in the bathroom.)

She looks at her cellphone. _So uh, Pearl, ya wanna talk?_

No, wait, why should she be the one to text Pearl at all? Pearl was the one being weird. Maybe she should wait it out. It's only been like, three days.

And if Amethyst's being honest with herself, she's spent the last three days drunk trying to get her mind off Pearl.

 _You can't keep cutting class,_ Lapis's last text reads. Amethyst flings the phone to some corner in her room, and buries herself back into bed.

* * *

For all her internal struggle, Amethyst ends up at Pearl's house, later that afternoon, sitting on the bench on the porch now that the day's all bright and beautiful. It hurts Amethyst's hung over eyes. Everything just has to be so picture-goddamn-perfect when it comes to Pearl, including the fact that she's somehow gotten the nicest housing on campus. Amethyst shouldn't even be here. But she can't deny the gravity of mystery around Pearl, about how she wants to open a door if Pearl will let her.

That's a pretty big goddamned _if_.

It isn't Pearl who shows up thirty minutes later though, but her housemate, Garnet Jones.

"Hey," Garnet says, already used to Amethyst's presence. "Pearl's still in class."

Amethyst nods; for a moment, she's unable to speak with the dull throb at the base of her skull. "Yeah, I just uh, was in the area."

"Are you alright? You look rather pale. I could call Lazuli up...?"

"Do all of you know each other or something? Some kinda secret club I ain't ever hear about?"

Garnet sits next to her. Amethyst shouldn't be annoyed, but she is, anyway. She reins it in, knowing that it's just the lovely bright sunlight and the smell of grass and how peaceful everything is, that pisses her off. Garnet Jones just happens to have that whole calm, detached thing going that Amethyst won't ever have.

"I know her from the swimming team – I used to be on the team before I went to boxing. It's more of a like-minds-attracting-each-other kind of thing, I think."

 _Yeah Amethyst, you're being weird,_ Amethyst tells herself.

"I kinda screwed things up with Pearl," Amethyst says. "She doesn't know I'm here."

"Hmm," Garnet replies.

"I don't actually know a lot about her, y'know?" Amethyst says, and it feels weird to say it to Garnet, but who else is she going to say it to?

"You accompanied her to the flea market two weeks ago," Garnet says, after a brief pause. "And you learned how to fix a phonograph."

"Uh, no. She fixed the record player. I just fed her her hipster salad and got her screwdriver and soldering iron and stuff."

Garnet shrugs the denial off. "You learned something about her, didn't you?"

"That she's a hipster nerd, mainly."

"And you learned something about yourself, didn't you?"

"Okay, you gotta back up a little. We aren't all as enlightened as you."

Garnet laughs. "Oh, I think you can figure it out."

She goes inside, and Amethyst is left waiting with fidgety hands. A few minutes later, Garnet comes out with some hot chocolate, which Amethyst sips without tearing her eyes away from her latest time-waster on her phone. The chocolate eases up the pain in her skull.

It also burns her tongue, but she's too busy tap-smashing her hero in some zombie infection game.

* * *

Pearl comes up after Amethyst has just beaten her own high score. Amethyst immediately stops the game and looks up, her bangs helpfully hiding her expression. _Game face on,_ she thinks to herself. She's gotta play it cool.

Maybe she should have thought about this better, because the glum look on Pearl's face erases whatever script Amethyst had upon seeing her.

"Amethyst," Pearl says, at the first step up to the porch.

"Hi-yo," Amethyst mutters, running a hand through her hair and hoping that it hides more of her face.

They don't speak for a beat.

"W-what are you doing here?"

"I was, uh, in the... neighbourhood?"

Pearl glances at Amethyst's empty mug. Eyes down on the floor, she apologizes, which is not what Amethyst was expecting. Well, it's what Amethyst wanted (right?) but after the apology's handed over she has no idea what to do with it.

"I shouldn't have walked out," Amethyst says. "I mean, this is why Lapis doesn't treat me all adult-like."

"You're doing a better job than we did when we were your age," Pearl says. "Um, you mean Lapis Lazuli right? The star swimmer?"

"Yeah, that one. It _is_ kinda hard to tell which one, since Lapis is such a common name, innit?"

Pearl rolls her eyes at that, which makes the whole thing feel almost reassuringly normal. Pearl sits next to her, though there's a few inches between them, quiet for a while.

"This is so fucking weird," Amethyst says. "I'm the one that's supposed to be the fuck up wild child between us, y'know."

"I know," Pearl says, without a tinge of her usual condescension at Amethyst's laziness.

Amethyst waits for Pearl to help continue the conversation, but of course she doesn't. There aren't that many problems Amethyst wants to solve – who cares about school, careers, or her life in general – and this one exception to the rule just has to make it hard.

It's maddening to want to be with someone who squawks over the vaguest possibility of conflict – and it's not a minor sort of disagreement, either. Pearl gets pissy over every tiny thing. What she refuses to talk about is worse.

Amethyst sucks in air through her teeth, trying to figure out what to say to coax Pearl out of... whatever.

"I dunno what to say," Amethyst says, giving up.

"Can we just not talk about it?"

 _Listen to yourself, Ms. Loquaciously Eloquent,_ Amethyst wants to say.

"Okay," Amethyst says. "Fine."

It's not a solution. It's not even a band aid. It's not even happiness that fills Amethyst when she sees Pearl sigh with relief and hold her hand with a tiny smile and a sideways look out the corner of her pleased eyes. At the same time Amethyst can't ignore the jolt of desire that runs through her when Pearl's fingers settle over hers, she can't ignore that she's ignoring something.

(Now what does she do when they start making out and shit starts getting heavy?)

* * *

Garnet Jones had said: You learned something about yourself, didn't you?

Amethyst still hasn't figured it out. She has no idea where they stand, her and Pearl. Even her imagination's ruined by it – she's gotten herself offa lot to Pearl, especially when they were drunk-fucking, but her nights are wasted on ping-ponging between desire and – and – and something so foreign to her that she can't even name it.

On the surface though, Amethyst does take a bit of pride in how good they look together (except when Pearl is with Garnet Jones, which still elicits a bit of jealousy on Amethyst's end, even if Garnet is definitely On Amethyst's Side and is a Good Person besides.) They also manage to work well together, as long as Pearl's doing the bossing and Amethyst is in a good mood to go along with it. They do the groceries together – Pearl drives a Subaru, which allows Amethyst to hoard – and under her strict supervision Amethyst's cut down on sugary snacks and instant dinners. Pearl had achieved this with some sneakiness, a trait Amethyst didn't think she had.

 _"Pearl?"_

 _"Yes?"_

 _"I had like, ten Hot Pockets stashed somewhere, right? I think they might be with you."_

 _Silence from the other line._

"Yo Pearl?"

 _"I-I'm afraid they're not with me, Amethyst," Pearl said from across the line. "I've already put away all my groceries – which you should have done two days ago – and they're not here."_

 _It was very much a Pearl thing to scold Amethyst over leaving groceries in their bags days after shopping._

 _"Well they aren't with me," Amethyst said. "So did we leave it in the car? Or the supermarket?"_

 _More silence on the other end of the line._

 _"Well, actually," Pearl said, "actually I already took them back."_

 _"What?"_

 _"They're not good for you, you know."_

 _"Oh God. That was going to be my dinner!"_

 _"I added vegetables to your bags, Amethyst! Did you just leave all your groceries on the countertop? Since we went grocery shopping?"_

 _"...Yeah."_

 _Pearl had screeched at her to go check. There wasn't much point to checking. It just meant that Amethyst had to throw out the vegetables. ("Call me after you've cleaned up the countertop!")_

 _It was absolutely filthy and probably the only reason Amethyst's roommates were okay with it was because they were always out._

* * *

SINGULARITY

/

/

Being alone with Pearl is harder. Sometimes their 'study sessions' (always at Pearl's house, and always when Garnet Jones is out) do devolve into makeout sessions but they don't last that way for long. It's not Pearl who wants it to stop – somehow Amethyst's brain picks itself up from the gutter where it rolled to and tells her hands off and at the same time she's sweaty with the singular want to fuck Pearl senseless she's also sweating off the guilt.

 _The first time she'd pulled away Pearl had asked what was wrong._

 _Amethyst had tripped over everything she wanted to say: irritation that she couldn't tell what was up with Pearl, anger that she had to be the one to pick Pearl's feelings apart and figure them out, guilt over – maybe nothing, god damn it! Amethyst ended up rolling into a bundle of blanket, curled up with her hair covering her face and her hands getting sweat everywhere and her own wetness making things worse._

 _It made her angry that Pearl was suddenly timid at having done something wrong. Pearl was right, it was her fault, and at the same time it wasn't her fault. They ended up not saying anything and not studying and Amethyst had to wing yet another exam._

 _The second time it happened Amethyst finally had something to say: "I don't want things to get weird again!"_

 _And Pearl had replied that she was trying which somehow made it worse._

 _"I don't want you to try! I don't want to do it if you don't want to do it!"_

 _"That's a lie, Amethyst. You want it. Your pupils are dilated. Dilated pupils are a – a sign of – arousal."_

 _Amethyst wasn't particularly gifted with words. "Well my body doesn't know me!"_

 _For the second time she walked out of the room and into the bathroom, trying to calm her shakes. This is so fucked up, she was thinking. Amethyst had been pretty damn sure sex was for fun, not for this, whatever this is._

 _She was clammy all over, that second time around. Weak at the knees, she ended up sitting on the bathroom carpet, back to the door._

 _Pearl had knocked on the door a few minutes after. "There's beer in the fridge," Pearl had said._

 _"I don't want it," Amethyst had said, still pretty pissed at herself for being so turned on._

 _Things were silent on the other side._

 _Finally Amethyst heard Pearl walking away. Her brain snapped to attention, making a hasty connection: "You'd better not be drinking, Pearl!"_

 _"I – I'm letting you out!"_

 _So Amethyst did come out. Pearl handed her her jacket without looking at her._

Holy crap this is fucked up _, Amethyst thought, the sentence repeating itself constantly. That was the beat of her thoughts._

Holy crap this is fucked up.

* * *

She texts Pearl after that, saying maybe they should take some time off to think and maybe not 'study' so much together. It doesn't help: Amethyst can't come when she touches herself, because Pearl always pops up in her head. There's always that awkward feeling that something's wrong, that hyperaware sense of where her hands are, the burning sensation that she feels guilty about – even with her eyes closed, even with electricity and want running up and down, even with the memory of Pearl breathing so damn close next to her it ought to be enough to shut her brain down – she can't really turn her brain off from thinking _holy crap this is fucked up_ and she doesn't know what _this_ is or what is fucked up, and she doesn't know if she wants to know.

She has to talk to someone about Pearl. Not Lapis. Lapis is super weird about relationships, and somehow this feels too private. Amethyst isn't close enough to ask Garnet Jones about Pearl. And Jenny and the others aren't close to Pearl, either, and, honestly, Amethyst might party with a lot of people but she's not about to bare her goddamned soul to 'em. That's so fucking embarrassing.

* * *

PROBLEM-SOLVING

/

/

There is one person she could be embarrassed to, though.

Peridot can probably tell Amethyst needs something from her: Amethyst agrees to play old computer games on an emulator without any whining. She doesn't know how, but Peridot has two keyboards connected to her gaming rig.

Amethyst doesn't try to make it interesting for Peridot. For one thing the game's in Japanese, and it's a fighting game without any health bar. How the hell does that even make sense? Somehow Peridot just slashes her clean with one blow while Amethyst's own pixelated swordswinger gets parried every damn time.

"You can try you know," Peridot says, after her annoying avatar slices through Amethyst's dual-wielder. _Thock!_ Peridot's avatar sheathes his sword as a spray of square pixels erupts from Amethyst's dead dude. It must have been cutting edge ten years ago, all those square droplets of blood.

"It's a stupid game," Amethyst snapped. "It doesn't have a health bar."

"You're supposed to wait for an opening," Peridot tries to explain. "Oh god, why do I even bother. You just want me to help you with your goddamn homework. Fine. Hand it over."

"C'mon Peridot I survived last year without you. I do have..." Amethyst makes air quotes, pitches her voice higher, like Peridot's, "some computing capability."

"Then what the hell are you here for?"

"What, I can't just hang out with you?"

"No," Peridot says, point-blank. "You're a user."

"I'm a friend," Amethyst tries to argue.

"A needy one," Peridot says. "But what is it? I have stuff to do now that we've gotten all this pretend-friend stuff out of the way."

Does Peridot really think of her like that? Naw, they're bros, right? Bros aren't paranoid about each other's bro-ness. All this shit getting dumped on her is enough to piss her off, so she says, "It's a minor thing."

"Just fucking say so already!"

Amethyst looks at Peridot.

"I need to eat first."

Peridot throws ramen square into her face. "Fuck, it was easier to deal with you when you wanted homework."

/

They eat in the shared dorm kitchen. Peridot refuses to let Amethyst touch anything, so instead she's sitting down listening to every clink and thump Peridot makes. It's roomy enough, this kitchen, especially with no one around. To Amethyst's left and right are more rooms, but all the doors are closed and it looks like everyone's still out. There are some kids in the third floor below them, but they're far away enough not to be loud.

"I thought you had a roommate."

"I thought you came here to waste my time with your pressing issues, not mine."

"It's normal to ask how people are doing!"

Peridot stares at her. "What is Pearl doing to you? Or college?"

Amethyst scowls and blushes and slurps her noodles.

"That clod, by the way, is out at some band camp. She's just out for the week."

For old time's sake, Amethyst asks, "Is she hot?"

Peridot shrugs. "I don't understand these... human things. I have more important matters to pay attention to than mating rituals."

Amethyst laughs. Then she wonders just what she's doing, about to talk to someone with no interest in people, about a special person.

A special person? Did Amethyst just really think that?

"Yeah well, I just wanna talk, y'know."

"About that Pearl of yours?"

"Yeah. About that."

Peridot's down to drinking the awful, sodium-laden soup. (Shit, Pearl really is digging into her mind.)

"About Pearl," Amethyst starts to say. "I can't get laid with her anymore, dude."

It sounds stupid, but Peridot's default response to everything is to judge it for being stupid anyway, so this is nothing new for her.

"I mean, I get this weird vibe, like, like, y'know," and Amethyst actually says _like,_ and _y 'know_ several times before Peridot interrupts saying she sounds like a broken record.

"Like she wants to screw me because she likes me and she thinks it's a part of the deal, y'know? And when I ask her about it she gets all weird."

"Wasn't she screwing you before she liked you?"

"She called it," and here Amethyst winces, because she's never heard anyone talk about sex the way Pearl talks about it, "mechanical release."

"So? That just means it was something physical to her before, and now you're worried she's pressured because you don't want it to be just physical?"

"That's kind of what a relationship is, Peri! Like, it's not about banging someone senseless."

"I should be recording this. Who the hell are you?"

"Well, it is about banging someone senseless! Someone that likes to be banged for no other reason than that it's nice to be banged! She needs to drink herself out of her goddamn mind before she can even bang anyone. Isn't that fucked up?"

"I thought we went through this the last time you drank."

Amethyst stares into her soup. Peridot clears her throat after the silence grows too much to bear. "Admittedly it may not have been a satisfactory resolution for you."

When Amethyst still doesn't say anything, Peridot continues, "though really, I don't know why you bother. You are making an effort. Is shemaking an effort? Do you think it bothers her? You could just dump her, you know. And then we could play video games properly."

Amethyst should probably be pissed that Peridot's first solution to anything human is to give up on it and go back to computers, but the whole situation has gone off to weirdo land, and so she ends up laughing instead.

"I can't dump her," Amethyst says, with a faint, tired smile. Her hair's all over her face again. She looks into her soup. This isn't an appropriate meal, is the first thing that comes out of her head. Said in Pearl's voice, of course. "It kinda doesn't work that way."

"It's not working now."

"Peri, when you were making those lego robot things, you didn't throw 'em out when they didn't work right away."

"When a computer doesn't work," Peridot says, taking this as seriously as Amethyst, "it's the human's fault. When two humans don't work, it's not... very... clear. Which is why we don't do relationships."

We. Peridot had lumped Amethyst in along with her, in the sense that Amethyst might like the physical part of people – Peridot could understand that, same as Pearl's take on sex as mechanical bleh – but not the tangled mess of emotions that came with a relationship. What could she do? Pearl and she just happened.

"Like I said," Amethyst says, "I'm kinda too into this."

"Then there's nothing you can do but keep trying," Peridot says. She still sounds annoyed, but Amethyst can appreciate that she tries not to roll her eyes. "Just make sure you don't try the same thing and expect different results."

They're quiet again. Eventually Peridot putters off to work on her computer, throwing Amethyst her DS with instructions to raise her Pokemon if Amethyst insists on moping in her space. With nothing better to do, Amethyst spends the rest of the afternoon at the kitchen, ignoring the freshmen looking at her every now and then, levelling up. (Pokemon. Geez. She was eight when she last touched this stuff. She doesn't even know any of the monsters in this one.)

* * *

 _-I never really solved your problem,_ Peridot texts after Amethyst has gone back to her dorm.

 _-its fine_

 _-I think it's the computer's fault, in this case._

The computer's fault – she means Pearl, Amethyst realizes.

 _Ding!_ There's another text.

 _-Maybe it wasn't working at full capacity when you got it._

 _-Though I could be biased due to a lack of information from the other side,_ a follow-up text says.

Just as fast as the last one, another message pops up:

 _-I would run a diagnostic but I don't know how to do that._

Peridot's trying to cheer her up. Amethyst gets that. Robots are a poor analogy for people; Peridot knows that. This is all she can offer, though.

 _-ill figure it out peri dont worry about it_

Peridot doesn't reply right away. Amethyst putters around her shared dorm, oddly proud that at least none of the used plates sitting on the sink are here.

 _-Thanks for levelling up my Delphox._

Her what? Oh yeah. It was one of the monsters in her game. Maybe.

 _-np_

* * *

Amethyst doesn't talk to Pearl for the next few days; in fact, she doesn't see Pearl or intend to trudge back into her unfairly beautiful house. She goes to class, hangs out with other people, reminds herself that she's normal. On Friday night, at the end of her last class, she decides to hang out with Lapis and see if she can investigate the mystery of Lapis's clean room.

Instead she bumps into Garnet Jones, fresh out of a shower, about to exit the pool. The glass door's frosted, so Amethyst can't see if anyone else is inside.

"Howdy," Garnet says.

"Hey. Anyone in there?"

"Swim team's dismissed early today," Garnet says. "Pool's closed."

"Shoot," Amethyst mutters.

"Wanna have dinner?"

The invitation catches Amethyst off-guard. She looks up to Garnet, who, as always, is wearing her sunglasses. God damn she's unreadable.

"Sure," Amethyst says, "better than eating alone."


	3. golden hour

_**AN:** The music for this chapter is indicated at the end. Don't forget the mature rating – this chapter earns it. Warnings for consent issues apply. Thank you to tumblr user loycos for reading the initial draft._

 **ch3: golden hour**

/

 _I have the sun, it's a star – why should I refuse it?_

/

/

/

MOSAIC

Garnet and Amethyst end up eating at a café in the main library. It's pretty swanky and all with the new renovation, with a price tag to match, but Amethyst doesn't mind treating herself out.

"So uh," Amethyst says, "how's it going?"

"It's going," Garnet says with that too-cool half-smile. "And you?"

"Eh," Amethyst says, "it's as good as it's going to get, I guess."

They talk about other professors, gossip, that kind of thing. Which ones will let students have a second chance, which ones don't bother to come in, the easiest classes to pass, which instructors are unreasonable. It's kind of like talking to Lapis.

They're done with dinner by the time Amethyst finally asks how Pearl is.

"She's been occupied," Garnet says. "Picked up another car she got secondhand. Planning to sell it, I think, once she's done fixing it up."

 _Okay? I guess she's doing fine without me._

"She's been pushing herself pretty hard," Garnet continues, just when Amethyst thought she couldn't get anything out of Garnet's news report.

Amethyst isn't sure what to say.

"You should come visit," Garnet suggests.

"What, now? She kicked me out last time," Amethyst grumbles.

"Over what?"

 _None of your goddamn business_ , Amethyst thinks. "Just stuff."

Garnet considers the empty plate in front of her. "Pearl is difficult, sometimes," she acknowledges. "We're all like that. She tries very hard to be pleasant."

"She tries too hard sometimes," Amethyst mutters, offhand. Then she realizes what she's said and her eyes dart straight to Garnet.

Garnet shrugs. "She does. But she's my friend, regardless. And… yours."

"It's like talking to a fuckin' brick wall." (Honestly, talking to them _both_ is like talking to a brick wall.) "I mean, I don't even get anything out of it," Amethyst grumbles.

"Is that really what you think? Relationships aren't supposed to be easy, you know."

"Oh wow," Amethyst growls. "Now I'm getting a lecture from – from some random upperclassman. Don't fuckin' tell me _relationships aren't supposed to be easy_ like I'm some kind of bratty kid. Just – fuck."

Amethyst gets up and slams a bill on the table. "Seriously, fuck it. Why don't you fucking talk to _Pearl,_ fuck."

That's got to be a record. Three fucks in one sentence. She makes her way out, as fast as her legs will take her.

/

/

She spends the evening playing video games at Peridot's. Screw Lapis – she doesn't open up and treats Amethyst like a kid. Screw Pearl – she's just like Lapis, won't tell her what the deal is. Screw Garnet, seriously, who does she think she is?

"I hate adults."

"Shut up and cover me, you clod!"

Amethyst has always sucked at hardcore shooting games. "Ah, dammit," she grumbles, taking off the headset as soon as the match is over, "I'll just go draw in my room or something."

Peridot disconnects them both from the game. After a brief pause, she asks, "How's that portrait coming along?"

That makes Amethyst smile. Peridot softens up after a few hours of gameplay. Not that Amethyst would tease her about her sudden bouts of _humanity_ – they're cool, and Amethyst wants to keep it that way, 'cos all the upperclassmen around them aren't cooperating.

"It's halfway done," Amethyst mutters, tossing Peridot her cellphone. "I haven't taken a picture of the portrait, though. Those are just studies."

"This is Pearl?"

"Yeah."

"Did she know you're drawing her for class?"

"Nope. I was gonna tell her," Amethyst says, "but y'know, shit 'n stuff."

"Hmm," Peridot says, actually trying to find something to say. "It's… aesthetically pleasing, I suppose. The composition of lines and curves and… polygons. Is that neck… proportional? She looks stretched out."

 _Fuckin' nerd._

"Yeah, it's how she looks," Amethyst mutters. "I'm good at anatomy. Especially Pearl's, heh."

She says it mostly to piss Peridot off. "Gross," Peridot says, giving back the phone. "Are you still going to use her as a model, though? Considering that… you're not, well, I don't know what your status is."

"Yeah well," Amethyst says, suddenly wondering what it means that she still wants to use Pearl's face. Does she have to ask for permission, now that they're not really talking or maybe she shouldn't? But she's already made a lot of studies, especially during that one afternoon Pearl was fixing that record player…

"Whatever, you know. I've already done a lot of work. I can't just find some other subject."

"I see."

/

/

Pearl approaches her during lunch the following day.

"Hello," she says. She's wearing a white blouse and bangles and her usual tight-fitting jeans: they highlight the lack of ass, but also the fact that Pearl's legs go on forever.

"Hey," Amethyst says, and she can't control the amount of fondness in her voice. She's supposed to be irritated! Ugh.

Pearl's face brightens at the lack of hostility.

"Could we… have a coffee?"

"I've had three," Amethyst says gruffly. At the look on Pearl's face, she waves a hand and says, "Ah, fine. Fine. I need another one anyway. You're paying!"

"That can be arranged," Pearl says with a quirk of her lips.

Goddamn she's making this too easy.

/

/

Pearl orders an Americano for Amethyst and a latte for herself while Amethyst secures their usual seat at the student center café.

"I've been thinking," Pearl says, after setting the drinks down and sinking into her sofa chair across Amethyst, "that… I've been making things hard for both of us."

That makes Amethyst's eyebrows go up.

"And, well, Garnet's exasperated," she says, and winces as she realizes what it sounds like. "Not that I'm only talking to you because of her."

"That would be sad, even by your standards," Amethyst snarks.

"It would be unfair to you," Pearl says, eyes looking downward at the steam coming out of her drink.

Amethyst watches her, unable to hold the sting in her chest; _God, Pearl's pretty_ , she thinks for the nth time, staring at Pearl's long eyelashes. She's always so dolled up, always so put together. Pearl removes the cover from her drink, her fingers lifting the lid in a smooth motion; she's so sure of herself around things, knows her way around broken toasters or computers. Pearl knows her way around Amethyst's body, too – back when they fucked, even when Pearl was drunk, she knew what she was doing. _It's partly muscle memory, isn't it?_ She'd said that once. Muscle memory, like a mechanical act. Amethyst's thoughts drift to Peridot, her little 'robot' friend, wondering about the crossroads of physical intimacy and clockwork. There's a picture there, a mosaic that adds up to Pearl, who now faces her in concern.

"Are you sure this is okay?"

 _Jesus, Amethyst, you're not even drinking. Fucking pay attention._

"It's fine."

"You don't have any more classes, right?"

"Yes Pearl," Amethyst grumbles. "You have my schedule and everything."

"Right," Pearl says.

Amethyst takes a sip of her Americano, not minding the heat.

"I've been fixing a car," Pearl says. "I just finished today."

She looks at Amethyst, a similar look to Peridot's request for a 'status report.'

"I went to class," Amethyst drawls. "In the morning." She says it like an achievement. (It is.) "It's just a three hour cigarette break for the goddamn prof." She doesn't attend her classes because she gets more done when she's not in them. "Art classes are like, they give you a list of requirements at the start of the semester and don't really care if you show up as long as you turn in something with the mediums or techniques they 'discuss' in class." She says, complete with air quotes.

"I see."

"I don't really have a lot of art classes yet. Majors start next year. But you already know that."

"Did you pass your last exam in accounting?"

As much as Amethyst hates to admit it, she'd taken a general accounting class because Vidalia had told Amethyst not to end up like she did.

"I kinda did, thanks. I got all the time value of money equations right."

"You can be quite clever when you want to be," Pearl says.

"Ugh! Don't sound so old, P."

That gives Pearl pause. They sip at their drinks for a moment. Amethyst watches Pearl's fingers, her nervous tics, her fluttering eyelashes. She looks like she's thinking extra hard, before her eyes finally rest on Amethyst.

"How many classes can you cut before they drop you?"

"Uh, I dunno. But like, it's not even mid-semester yet, I'm pretty sure I haven't used up all of my absences. Maybe half?"

Pearl takes a long drink out of her coffee. She sets it down, makes sure it's stable. Her eyes flicker back up to Amethyst.

"I was thinking of taking the car out for a road trip. This afternoon, I mean. A test drive. We'll be out for at least a day."

For a second, Amethyst can't believe what she hears.

Pearl cutting an entire day of classes?

For a road trip?

With her?

"Seriously?"

"Yes? Yes."

"What about class?"

"I have a near-perfect record this year," Pearl says smugly. "For times like this."

Then Pearl's smile melts into something softer.

"Will you… give me a chance?"

As if Amethyst could say no to that smile, both hopeful and shy.

"Like I ever needed an excuse to cut class!"

/

/

CHILL

They reconvene by one-thirty. Garnet is out, which is a relief because Amethyst doesn't know if she should thank Garnet – maybe after Garnet apologizes for that botched attempt to help or whatever (like hell is _she,_ Amethyst Alonzo, gonna apologize to Garnet Jones.) They walk to the student parking lot.

Pearl's latest experiment is an ancient car, boxy and smelling of oil. It's light brown, a color that conjures up eighties movies. Nobody has a ride with that color these days.

"They don't build cars like this anymore," Pearl says. "The manufacturer, I mean. It's all trash, now." She points out the safety features, the shock absorbers, the upholstery on the car: all things Amethyst doesn't care for, but she listens anyway. Pearl rattles off a list of things she's had to do to fix it, such as replacing the spark plugs and battery, tightening some nuts and bolts, changing the oil, replacing the parking brake cable, et cetera, et cetera.

"I washed it myself," she says, "including the seats. And waxed it, too."

Amethyst tries to conjure a sexy Pearl-washing-car fantasy: it doesn't fly. She knows Pearl too well. If anyone could suck the sexy out of getting hosed while cleaning a car, it's Pearl. But she _can_ imagine Pearl obsessing over every last stain on the seats, on vacuuming every speck of dust. She _can_ imagine Pearl puffing her cheeks when something doesn't go according to plan, can imagine Pearl forgetting to eat because she can't stop a job halfway.

It's not her loins burning up; it's something a little higher up her body.

"How the hell did you clean this thing in the parking lot?"

"I didn't. I drove it to a friend's who lives nearby."

Pearl opens the door and the smell of detergent mixes with the wax.

"We'll have to air it out for a bit," Pearl says. "Hope you don't mind."

"I don't," Amethyst mutters. "C'mon, let's go." She steps in, rolls her window down. Pearl joins her a moment later in the driver's seat.

"Don't forget your seatbelt."

/

/

Amethyst notices a cassette deck on the car's panel. "This thing really is ancient."

"That doesn't work," Pearl says politely. "I could fix it, but I didn't see the point." She gestures to a portable speaker, her phone already slotted in, on the dashboard. "Just press the play button."

Music fades in gently.

"And now we're listening to Eric Satie's Gymnopedie," Pearl says, like a flight attendant. A smile lights her face up even as she stares relentlessly into the road. "I've always wanted to DJ and announce music and stuff."

Amethyst suppresses a snort. Pearl sounds more like a public service announcement. Nor does Amethyst say that Pearl's idea of music sounds like elevator music. For all she knows it _is_ elevator music.

"Cool," she says, which is as far as she can lie for Pearl's sake. This subjects her to an hour of afternoon chill mixed with various instrumental bands she's never heard of.

At the end of her tether, she finally asks if Pearl has any Nicki Minaj.

"Um. You could search for it?"

Amethyst plucks the music player off the speakers, searching for Nicki. Though they've been driving past farms, Pearl's signal strength is good enough to stream music. Amethyst scrolls through some songs and decides on one with a smirk. Payback time.

She maxes out the volume as the next song crossfades in, loud claps and whoops that she hopes wakes the dead up.

"You could suck my diznick, if you take these jizzes! You don't like them disses, give my ass some kisses," Amethyst raps, finally free of Pearl's PSA speeches. She waggles her eyes at Pearl, who shrugs, throws her hands in the air, and then returns them to the wheel.

"C'mon P," Amethyst says. "You can do the singing parts. She's got this song with Rihanna."

"I'm afraid I don't know any of her songs,' Pearl responds dryly.

"Yeah, like we totally don't go to parties blaring out R'n B! You'll learn it fast. You're smart, aren't'cha?"

Amethyst puts another song on repeat, grinning at the wince Pearl makes every time she hears " _I am not fly, I am levitation."_ Amethyst has never seen anyone in such pain over some creative use of the English language.

On the third repeat, Pearl twists the volume down. "Let's move on?"

"Awh, c'mon Pearl! I've been listening to _your_ music for an entire hour… and a half!"

"Change the song, at least."

"You really don't want a duet? With me?" Amethyst winks, accompanies it with a body wave. She starts bouncing on the chair, throwing in a few winks as she switches to a faster song with a thumping bass line.

Pearl blushes and swallows. "I need to keep my eyes on the road, Ame!" She throws Amethyst another glance. "And when did you take off your seatbelt! Put it back on!"

 _That took her long enough to notice._

 _Well duh, she was staring at your boobs._

Amethyst grins to herself at that. She could fit herself on Pearl's lap, if she really wants to mess Pearl up.

 _Maybe you should talk to her properly before doing anything too sexy_ , her mind cautions. _Pearl might overheat._

So Amethyst sits back down with the realization of how hard it is to stay mad at Pearl.

The entire ride is proof of that.

/

/

GOLDEN AFTERNOON

Pearl stops in the middle of nowhere. She guides the car-offroad, kills the engine, stretches her arms. "Driving break," she says. They step out of the car.

"We're… by the lake?"

"No, just a pond."

Amethyst follows Pearl to the back. She opens the trunk. The first thing that catches Amethyst's attention is the beer. There's a whole case and an ice bucket.

"That's for when we get to the motel," Pearl says. "But I did leave three beers chilled in case you wanted one. It's pretty good weather for it."

Amethyst hesitates.

They're in the middle of nowhere, the sun's beating down on them, the wind's whipping their hair, and if Amethyst inhales, she can smell water and wild grass and flowers.

"You're not drinking, are you?"

"Obviously not," Pearl says. "I'm driving." She takes out a mat and a bottle of water instead. "We're going to walk for a bit," she says.

 _Geez, Ame, it's one bottle of beer._

That, and Pearl seems to be behaving normally.

That, and the weather really is perfect for it.

She picks up the bottle, closes the trunk, and follows Pearl towards the woods.

/

The bit of walking turns out to be a thirty-minute hike in which Pearl somehow manages to go up sharp inclines carrying a mat and the ice bucket of drinks while Amethyst stumbles over every pebble.

"You are such a city kid," Pearl says with a grin, sitting on a tree branch while Amethyst huffs and puffs.

"Oh yeah? Where'd you grow up, huh?"

"Beach City – well it's not really a proper city, it's this tiny place in Delmarva. We're a tourist trap, lots of beach and vegetation and hiking spots. We're not big like Empire City."

"Empire City's more up my street," Amethyst says. She inhales again, smells Pearl's perfume, realizes that Pearl isn't even sweating.

"We're almost there," Pearl says, walking through the bushes. Amethyst shakes her head and follows –

into a clearing with the pond that Pearl kept mentioning.

"Wow," Amethyst says, watching Pearl skitter down to the pond's edge. She isn't as deft; by the time she's made it, Pearl has already set down the picnic mat.

"I shoulda brought my art stuff," Amethyst mutters, sitting next to Pearl.

They're quiet for a few minutes, taking in the scene and the sounds. Amethyst can't find it in herself to roll her eyes, can't call the whole thing corny. She should be annoyed at herself, at the smile that she can't help spreading on her face.

"It's – it's nice," she finds herself saying.

 _That's it? Are you Peridot?_

"It is," Pearl says, edging her fingers over Amethyst's. Her eyes flicker up to Amethyst, her lips in a smile both small and hopeful.

It's the kind of smile that ends in a kiss, the kind of smile that jumpstarts her heart and makes it pound against her ribcage.

The kiss, when it comes, is too short. "Pearl," Amethyst whines, opening her eyes.

"You look like you're about to pass out," Pearl says.

 _Cheeky little–!_

The thought goes up in smoke as Pearl cups Amethyst's face with a hand. Whatever it is she's saying, Amethyst can't hear over the sensation of Pearl's hand on her face, on how hard her heart is thumping.

Amethyst finally pays attention when Pearl removes her hand and comes back with the ice-cold beer. "You still there?"

"F-f-fuck you!"

"Not now," Pearl says tartly, poking Amethyst's cheek with her finger.

Amethyst blushes. Harder. If such a thing were possible.

"I think I'll just have the water," she says.

"Surely, my lady."

All contact with Pearl ceased, Amethyst takes deep breaths. Long ones. Her heart doesn't stop thumping hard. She tries to look anywhere else but Pearl. She ends up spilling the water on her front.

"It's cool, it's cool," she grumbles as Pearl tries to hand her a towel. She can tell Pearl's hovering, suddenly unsure what to say.

Pearl settles on an apology. "Sorry for teasing you," she says.

Amethyst finishes wiping the water off using her shirt.

"It's the most surprising thing about you," Pearl says softly.

"What?"

"You're not like when we're drunk," Pearl says.

"Well, obviously," Amethyst says. Is Pearl saying she's not smooth? Because she's totally not smooth. She isn't normally this dorky, damn it, it's just Pearl.

"It's cute," Pearl says with a smile stretching out on her face. "Anybody ever tell you you look like a squirrel?"

"Is that a compliment?"

"Your cheeks get all puffy. A squirrel has pouches," Pearl explains, "that puff up when they put stuff inside. You're kind of a hoarder, aren't you? That's squirrel-like, too."

Pearl can't flirt for shit when she's sober. Amethyst should point that out, but again her body refuses to follow her mind and instead she finds herself running a hand through her hair and saying, "Oh yeah? I guess…"

All this with a red-hot face that refuses to cool down.

Pearl pokes her cheek a second time. Then places her hand atop Amethyst's, again.

"So, uh, ah, how'd you find out about this place?"

"I found it with some friends when I was a freshman," Pearl says, looking at the lake. "My friend's car broke down some distance away and we ended up sleeping in the open and all. Without a tent or any preparation. I threw a fit, but it worked out in the end."

 _Some friends._ And yet Amethyst only knows Garnet. There's a lot about Pearl she doesn't know.

"Do you go here every time you hit a rough patch with your exes? Is this some kind of Pearl ritual? Fix a car and go on a road trip?"

"It's how I cope, okay? And no, I don't take everyone I date here," she says.

"How many girlfriends have you had, anyway?"

"Maybe four."

"Why maybe?"

"Because," Pearl says with a huff, "I… I don't know, okay? Four. Four. There you go."

Weird answer, but Amethyst lets it slide. Above her, clouds float on by. One of them looks like a giraffe. Another one looks like a fat, lazy cat.

This isn't so bad. In fact, it's pretty damn good. Maybe not everything has to be so hard. Maybe they can just chill like this.

/

They leave as the sun begins to set; by then, Amethyst has given in to two beers. They're the best two beers she's had recently: sweet, but the mood is relaxed rather than jarring.

After a few more hours of driving while listening to Garnet's playlist (Amethyst had discovered it and it was a good compromise to both their tastes), they stop for a short dinner at a diner, then they finally reach their destination: at a motel that Pearl's booked ahead of time. She backs into the parking lot, side-eyeing between the mirror and the curb. Parking done, she hands Amethyst the key while she checks the glove compartment.

"I'm not draggin' all this in," Amethyst says.

"I can carry that," Pearl says, peering from just behind her, but Amethyst is already removing the bottles from the case and carrying the remaining half to the door.

"If you insist…"

/

/

RITUAL (SHE ASKED FOR IT)

It doesn't take long for them to sit across from each other on the mini-bar, in soft, yellow lighting, down to their boxers and tank tops. Amethyst watches Pearl prepare two glasses, how she sets the ice into the glass, how she snaps open two cans, how she mixes two flavoured beers into a glass, both flavors mixing, one honey-flavored, the other one, berry. It's a ritual that ends with a deep inhale of air accompanied by a guzzle. Pearl's neck is a soft yellow under this kind of light; Amethyst's fingers could sink into that skin, disappear, maybe; she can see her fingers in her mind's eye digging deep till she gets into the muscle and the sinew and the blood vessels.

It's a morbid thing to think about, but Amethyst is good at anatomy, and she can't deny how badly she wants to sink into Pearl.

Should she say something?

She wonders if this too, will end up on a shelf of her regrets.

"Hey," she tells Pearl, as Pearl mixes her drink. "We're not going to get wasted, right?"

"You need a driver tomorrow," Pearl says in reply.

"Where are we going tomorrow?"

"There's a promontory a little further up north, it's a pretty great view. After that we'll turn around."

"Well, okay, but are you absolutely sure you should be drinking?"

Pearl slides Amethyst her glass.

"It's the easiest way to make me talk," Pearl replies. "It's the easiest way for me to talk."

"Can you function at all without drinking?"

"Obviously," Pearl says, coasting over her problems. "Did you think I fixed that car drunk? I needed hand-eye coordination for that."

"So it's not all muscle memory like sex, huh."

"Sex is something else," Pearl replies tartly. "And I'd appreciate you waiting till my fourth drink before we talk about that."

 _She's getting bossy_ , Amethyst thinks.

 _You're finding it sexy, Alonzo._

 _So what if I am?_

It's a different kind of feeling though, from the one this afternoon.

Amethyst sniffs her beer and drinks. She's been arguing with herself a lot over Pearl; she doesn't want to grow a split personality over this. That's a clever thought.

It registers late that the drink is sweeter, since it's a mix. In her surprise, she drinks again. This is the kind of beer you could keep chugging away at, without wincing over the bitter taste. Across her, Pearl's moved to open a bag of chips. That's not enough to keep the alcohol from hitting hard and fast. Amethyst connects the dots: Pearl will be hammered in no time.

She tries the chips; they're dry and salty. They make her drink more.

"This is your favorite beer?"

"It is."

"Pansy."

They crunch on the chips and they snap open beers.

"It's creepy as fuck when it's so quiet."

"I could turn on the TV."

/

/

Several beers later, they run out of evening sitcoms to laugh about. They're left with the news. They go on drinking, making the occasional comment about the increasing price of this or that, or tidbits like seasonal flu warnings.

"I get hay fever every year," Pearl mutters out of the blue. She fills her glass yet again and drinks. "Around this time, actually."

The news breaks for a word from their sponsors.

"What's the weirdest thing you've ever done in bed?" Pearl asks, out of the blue, her eyes suddenly sharp on Amethyst.

Zero to one hundred.

Amethyst pauses, her mind suddenly hazy. She hears the humming of the aircon, and the beating of her own heart, suddenly, at the forefront of her mind.

"Not a lot, honestly," Amethyst replies. She's not about to lie to Pearl about the gazillion non-existent girls she's banged – that's for the guys. "I can't really remember, but I think I did a threesome once."

"In college?"

"End of my freshman year," Amethyst says. She hopes Pearl won't ask who. They were just… people.

"Huh," Pearl says, adding a block of ice onto a full glass. A splash of beer hits her cheek; she wipes it off with a finger and licks her finger clean with a quick swipe.

 _Fucking Christ._

"Well – what about you?"

Pearl blinks; it looks like she's zoning in and out. _Maybe it's time to cut her off,_ Amethyst thinks, but so far it's not like they've done anything.

(Truth be told the alcohol's great.)

"I passed out," Pearl says, after a thoughtful stroke of her chin. "I couldn't breathe," she says. "I couldn't tell if I liked it. It was a show," she says, her fingers now on her neck, her eyes on the floor. She swallows and Amethyst watches that swan-like neck of hers move, her brain trying to add up words to a picture.

"Alcohol is a depressant," Pearl says. "At some point, you don't feel anything. But it was thrilling, in a way – you don't know what it is, but it's pushing you to the edge, how hard you can keep holding on. Do you understand?"

The way Pearl talks sounds like a schoolteacher. _Do you understand?_

It goes on like a lamp on the bedside table, a _click_ in Amethyst's mind, the image of a Pearl the professor, someone's hands squeezing hard, constricting Pearl's windpipe.

"Well I guess I liked it," Pearl says, her hands cupping her face as she leans forward on the table. Her eyes stare into her glass of beer. "I asked for it. I got what I wanted."

"Can you back the fuck up?"

"When did you start drinking?"

"In highschool," Amethyst says.

"I started late," Pearl says. "College."

"In college," she says, oddly brightly, "I used to be part of the fencing team. We don't have fraternities or sororities, but we have houses, you know? The Student Affairs office was pushing hard for all the athletic teams to hang out." Pearl giggles. "They thought we could cross train. The rowers with the fencers. The basketball team and the football team – as though they ever got along.

"Cross train my ass," Pearl says. "It was an excuse to party and show off. There were a few programs, sure, but everyone was just waiting for those to end."

She mixes herself another Berry Honey. "I wasn't there to party," Pearl says. She looks up at Amethyst. "When was your first..?"

"Highschool," Amethyst replies.

"I was late," Pearl says. "So I show up at my first party and… I can't believe it. You might not understand this," Pearl says, "but people liked me."

Pearl laughs nervously all of a sudden. "There wasn't anything to like, you know? But they were friendly. I could sit down anywhere and a few drinks later everything I said would be funny. I wasn't – I wasn't like that. I went through highschool freaking out over college, scared I'd never get in… and when I showed up it was every bit as good as I thought it would be. I never had that high school experience, I was always so obsessed with passing and getting in.

"I liked myself when I was drunk, you know?" Pearl laughs. "Of course you don't. You're fine the way you are. I'm… I need something to do. My hands are fidgety. I have nothing to say to anyone. Drinking slows me down. I need that."

Pearl's starting to slur. "I've never slept with a guy," she says, out of nowhere. "It's always been girls. Eventually it's something you start to look for. You can't go back once you've started. You don't need a relationship, you just need something physical."

"You started sleepin' 'round when you were a frosh?"

"I was eighteen," Pearl says irritably. "And I was highly sought after." Pearl smirks. Hiccups. Slams her glass, which makes it ring hard on the table, filling up the room. Shakes her head and opens a can and gets up and walks to the bed. She stares into the television without seeing anything.

With the flickering light reflected on her face and her eyes, her front looks like a neon blue sign.

"I'm pretty sure I was late to that, too," Pearl says. "When was your first time?"

"Sixteen and three-fourths," Amethyst says. She always answers like that, like she's a kid trying to convince the adults she's actually nine years old when she isn't.

"See?" Pearl says. She takes a sip out of the can and sets it down, tucks herself into the bed. "It's cold," she mutters.

Cold enough to harden Pearl's nipples, yeah. She's not wearing any bra, neither is Amethyst. Amethyst has given up trying to figure out if she's a sleaze for noticing. She's lost count of her beers. The cold lances up her feet when she steps onto the floor, so she makes her way fast to the carpeted part of the motel room.

By the time she's arrived, she's forgotten what she was going to tell Pearl. And so close to Pearl, all Amethyst can do is breathe her in. Pearl snuggles close and instinct takes over; Amethyst winds her arms around Pearl as Pearl cages Amethyst's face in her hands.

"I like you," Pearl says as she kisses Amethyst. Amethyst kisses back, just as hard. They shuffle around the bed, until it ends like it always does: Pearl under Amethyst, and Amethyst all over Pearl. Lips to Amethyst's ear, Pearl whispers as she holds Amethyst down: "You don't have to think too hard. I want it too. I just can't want it the normal way. It's not that complicated."

 _You only want it because you want to be wanted,_ Amethyst thinks, but it's a losing battle next to how good Pearl smells. So close to her, she smells the way she did the first night they touched each other. It feels like a million years away.

The sinking, hazy truth is that Amethyst wants this: she wants it when Pearl takes off her shirt, when she holds Pearl's torso, when her fingers slide down Pearl's butt. She wants it when Pearl kisses her, that electric jolt that her body can't help but respond to. She wants the rush of heat when Pearl bites her, when Pearl licks her ear.

The truth is that she's wet, has been dripping for a while listening to Pearl dryly and drunkenly talk about being tossed around in bed.

 _She wants it, she wants, she wants it,_ a part of her brain whispers to her. _So fuckin' take her. She likes it hard. She wants someone to squeeze her._ Like a tub of toothpaste. You squeeze the top and stuff comes out below.

Amethyst giggles with that image in her head. _Pearl's body is like a bottle of toothpaste. Just how drunk are you, Amethyst?_

She's drunk enough to flip Pearl over. Drunk enough to strip off Pearl's shorts. Drunk enough to ask her, again and again, _do you like that?_ Drunk enough that every time Pearl begs for it makes her mind sink lower and lower till there's nothing left but the sound of Pearl moaning for it.

It's muscle memory, at some point.

/

/

 _end chapter_

/

/

 _Comments of any kind are very much appreciated. Although I have tried to keep this as error-free as I could, I may have made a mistake somewhere; please feel free to correct me. Thank you for reading._

 **AN:** I very rarely use the word seduce, but it deserves to be said that Pearl's performance with Amethyst is a flat out seduction. Pearl being a victim of her issues (and some really fucked up circumstances) does not make what she's doing with Amethyst ok. Sure, I'm all for my readers interpreting stuff on their own, but that has to be said. Here, I'm dropping the anvil. It's not okay. Right here, I'm saying so.

Notes for beer brands and car brands (if you want to know what they are) are available at my tumblr, .com (forward slash) tagged (forward slash) sock-writes - FF net won't let me post the link in this post.


	4. sunset

**Chapter 4 - sunset**

Warning for this chapter: Stuff associated with an unhealthy frame of mind.

/

/

/

 _The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection._

 _"What are you doing there?" he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles._

 _"I am drinking," replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air._

 _"Why are you drinking?" demanded the little prince._

 _"So that I may forget," replied the tippler._

 _"Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him._

 _"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head._

 _"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him._

 _"Ashamed of drinking!" The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence._

 _– The Little Prince_

 _/_

 _/_

 _/_

 **LILY WHITE NECK**

Amethyst dreams.

 _She's in highschool again, and Jasper's driving her out of the city. Amethyst's sitting on top of the backrest, feeling the wind, holding onto the top of the windshield. There's a huge smile on Jasper's face as she looks up to Amethyst. She doesn't even tell Amethyst to sit back down._

She works! _Amethyst can hear Jasper hollering. It was a close call; Jasper had broken the car and Lapis's friend had bailed her out without it costing an arm and a leg. Although Jasper hadn't told her the reason for the sudden drive out of the city, Amethyst knows it's because Jasper'll be going to university soon._

 _She slides her ass down back to the seat, raises her eyes to get a good look at her sister. Jasper's broad face is, in profile, softer than she expected – they share the same cheeks, the same large eyes. Her sister's jaw is strong where hers is round, but with Jasper's mane framing her face and the easy smile, they look more like sisters than ever. She relaxes into the ride, lulled by her sister's open, easy-going grin._

 _In a blink, however, she finds herself sitting next to Pearl, tinkering with the record player. Once again, Amethyst's eyes are drawn to the half-smile on Pearl's face, the sureness that she will solve a puzzle._

 _She's lit in yellow; it's late afternoon and the breeze coming in from outside of the garage smells of the sea._

I should put away lunch _, Amethyst remembers thinking, the sudden image of some kind of salad weirdly paired with chopsticks on a plastic plate filling her mind._

 _The reel keeps playing, past and present, until Amethyst wakes up._

/

/

She can feel the layer of crust on her eyes, the dry emptiness of her mouth, and a vague pounding at the back of her skull. It takes a while to clear her eyes and her head; when she's done wiping the last of the sleep away she finally gets up.

What the hell is she doing here? Her mind's still awash in early memories of highschool, the deluge of dream-memories from the night before. She closes her eyes again and remembers meeting Peridot at school, asking herself how _this_ could be Lapis's cousin. She remembers her mother kicking her father out of the house at twelve, having won custody, and her sudden flare of anger when her father had told Jasper to _take care of Amethyst_ – like _she_ needed looking out for. She remembers eating butter and noodles at Vidalia's when neither Jasper or her mother had been home for a while.

But that's not where she is right now.

Her hand gropes around the bedside table, suddenly landing on a pill. Swivelling her head, she sees a glass of water, an aspirin, and a vitamin capsule.

Pearl.

Amethyst groans and flops back into bed. It's too much, all this, the memory of last night worming their way to the forefront of her mind. It's too damn much.

/

/

She gets dressed after drinking down the meds, wincing slightly at the twinge of soreness in her nipples from last night's… ah, fuck.

Amethyst has no idea what to think of last night.

 _You were used,_ her mind supplies, savagely.

 _Wow,_ she thinks to herself, _you won't even let me have breakfast before dropping the bomb huh?_

Her insides are completely empty. Her brain's still fuzzy. She walks outside, barefoot, and instantly regrets it – it's too cold to be walking out in an undershirt and shorts.

She spots Pearl's silhouette in the car. Inside, Pearl's asleep, her hands on the wheel, her head leaning back. Amethyst raps the door loudly, feels a little better when Pearl jumps out of her seat, jostling the half-eaten sandwich on her lap.

"S-sorry," she says, opening the door. "I got us breakfast. Well. I got you breakfast. Go ahead and eat, I'll just sort out our checkout. And don't forget to shower," she says.

Only Pearl could fuck her over and boss her around like that. Only Pearl.

On automatic, Amethyst takes the bag – it smells of bacon – realizing that her chance is slipping away to shout at Pearl.

By then though it's too late, for Pearl has begun her retreat to the motel reception.

 _Throw the bag, idiot!_

She could still throw it far enough to hit the back of Pearl's neck.

But then Pearl grows smaller and smaller. Amethyst crumples the the bag in her grip.

She had her chance to throw a tantrum, but one whiff of the bacon and the coffee inside and that was the end of it.

She needs coffee, and then she'll think of what to do about Pearl. She tells herself that, because it's the only consolation that's left.

/

/

The bathroom hits her with a wall of something floral. The whole place has been sprayed with perfume. There's a neat row of makeup (of course) all pink and white. Amethyst rolls her eyes, takes the soap and the shampoo, and comes out of the shower ten minutes later smelling like – she checks the label – lavender.

By breakfast she's functional, having put the giant bomb in her head aside to detonate later. She looks around, trying to find something to do, but Pearl's put away all the mess from last night – the glasses are washed, the empty chip bags are in the trash along with the cans – even Pearl's side of the bed has already been arranged, or as arranged as it can be with Amethyst still sleeping when Pearl tried to arrange it.

/

/

Amethyst is in the middle of putting on her seatbelt when Pearl asks, "Do you still want to go to the promontory?"

 _Click!_ Seatbelt in place, Amethyst looks forward to the road.

"It's why we're here, isn't it?"

 _(Well, apart from her needing a fuck from you, for some fucked up reason or what.)_

"Right. It's not too far away now… but we'll need to go uphill for a bit. Not high enough to, uh, thin the air or anything," Pearl says, and Amethyst has no idea what Pearl is trying to do or say, "But it is a little high."

"Sure."

Amethyst should ask if she's okay.

Amethyst should probably be worried that Pearl's driving her, but Pearl's as calm as ever, as though she didn't drink more than Amethyst the night before, her face made up so flawlessly that Amethyst can't even see a goddamn pore. The spike of anger within her dies just as soon as it comes. She's stuck here, she knows. She could have run and gotten herself a bus. She could have shouted at Pearl, hold her down until something comes clean, until something gives. But Pearl had showed up with breakfast and coffee, and Amethyst – Amethyst had been caught off guard.

Shit.

She should have realized earlier, that Pearl isn't as innocent as that damn lily white neck of hers. She's just good, somehow, at looking too oblivious to anything that isn't a machine.

/

/

 **BURNED**

The promontory's all harsh angles, and wind, and water. It's a hell of a cliff, Amethyst can tell, seeing how small the trees are in the distance – so small that it's all swaths of green, cut with a thin strip of highway. And if on the left is land, on the right is all water, specks of blue and glistening white. But Amethyst can't walk to the edge without shaking, so she stays leaning on the hood of Pearl's car.

High in the sky, the sun hangs, framed by clouds, drifting as they please. Amethyst stares into the blue of the sky, a vast expanse that can't be held in by a canvas or a photo. She wonders why she even tries to draw, when the world looks like this and nothing she paints will ever be as good as what she sees.

Pearl, on the other hand, walks to the edge without any fear and sits. Amethyst sucks in a breath at the sight. Bathed in the afternoon light, Pearl stands out in clear colors, all light pastels. And Amethyst struggles to contain this vague fear that Pearl might fall off, or that she wants to, or that, most likely, she sits there to tempt herself.

She walks as close as she can take to the edge, sitting behind Pearl.

"I could shove you off," Amethyst says, leaning forward with a wink and a smile.

"You could," Pearl replies with a grin of her own.

 _There's something wrong with her,_ her mind says, in Lapis's voice, which is weird because Lapis has never said anything about Pearl beyond _she's a nerd_.

 _There's something wrong with us,_ her mind corrects, this time in Amethyst's own voice.

"Well too bad, 'cos I need my driver."

She should feel stupid to offer and then go back on it, shouldn't she.

Pearl leans back, body falling into the ground, leaving her feet dangling on the edge of the cliff. "Yes, we'll have to go soon. I made tea, by the way, in case you're cold. I just need a little more time here," Pearl says, looking up at the sky.

"Uh, you'd better get it," Amethyst says. "I don't know where anything is in your car."

"Give me three minutes," Pearl says, closing her eyes.

Irrationally, despite not wanting to, Amethyst holds onto Pearl's shoulder.

/

/

Pearl picks herself up at last and walks straight to the trunk, retrieving hot water from a thermal flask and three large tea bags. She and Amethyst lean on the car as the tea steeps. Pearl's turned the music on, the sound of electronic pop wafting from within. At least she's set it to a pop top ten playlist.

Pearl unscrews the cover of the flask – also doubling as the cup – and pours. The sound of the tea swishing down – a hollow, constant pour – stands out in the wilderness of where they are.

The scene's so put together that Amethyst wishes Pearl had fucked her over after seeing this. As it stands it just makes the sourness of the night before worse, and the gaping hole widens the longer they don't talk about it.

What is Amethyst going to say? She can barely figure out what she feels, pushed in every way by her brain.

 _I need a drink_ , she thinks to herself, and suddenly laughs out loud at how ridiculous that sounds.

"It's nothing," she says to Pearl with a wide smile that comes effortlessly.

 _I'm totally nuts._

She takes the cup Pearl's holding out and drinks, ignoring the scalding heat.

/

/

 **DIAMOND CLUB**

At first, they don't talk when they climb back into the car for the ride home. Amethyst tries to distract herself by combing through Garnet's playlist; it's reassuringly familiar, but she's already heard most of the songs on the way here. The music falls to a low volume, barely heard.

She looks out, and suddenly remembers this morning's dream. Jasper and Pearl.

Jasper and Pearl. They're from the same year.

"Did you know Jasper?"

Pearl blinks for a beat. Tightens her hands on the wheel. "Yes, I did."

"Then you know I'm her sister."

"I figured out eventually. I, I didn't know it off the bat. But you gave me your schedule, and I saw your last name… I realized, you have her hair."

"I don't have her height," Amethyst says dryly, annoyed suddenly that after all these years she still thinks about that. "You never told me you knew."

Pearl takes her eyes off the road. "I didn't think it was appropriate."

"So you know about that whole boxing team hazing crap?"

"It was an affair that concerned the whole campus."

"Fuckin' scandalous," Amethyst says, like the word's out of a song.

"I'm sorry," Pearl says.

"What, it wasn't your fault she was beating people up."

Pearl shuts up, though, leaving Amethyst suddenly in the air, with a sudden need to say something.

"I dunno what to do about her," Amethyst says. "She never went home, just up and disappeared. I –"

 _I what? I just let it happen. I didn't even try to find her. Lapis shouldn't have stopped me._

"I spoke with her once."

That snaps Amethyst back to the present. "Woah, really?"

"Yes. At – at a party. She was very drunk, so I don't think she remembers it at all." Pearl says, and to Amethyst's shock Pearl doesn't sound pissed. "I was outside, at the backyard, trying to… take a breather. And I heard her come in and she just lumbered straight off to the fence, walking like she owned the place. She didn't see me leaning on the wall of the house till a little later. When she finally did see she wasn't alone she… well, I thought she would tell me to leave.

"But she didn't. She sat next to me, on the bench. She asked me if I was from the swim team – I never got to tell her I wasn't. She bragged about her girlfriend," Pearl says with a smile, "though her girlfriend wasn't there, and said they'd be the first from their families to go to college."

"That doesn't sound like Jasper."

Pearl, to her surprise, laughs. "Oh, I know. She had a… a reputation, a bitchy battering ram, they said. But it was after the boxing team won the qualifying rounds, early in our freshmen year. So I imagine she was, well, happy. They made a lot of noise over winning."

Amethyst can't really imagine it, a Jasper that'd just randomly tell someone, excited, like a kid, _hey, didja see that, we won!_

But then Jasper was surly when drunk mostly because she was either fighting with Lapis or feeling like she lost – something Amethyst knows she'd never admit to anyone before college. Amethyst has no idea what kind of person Jasper in college would have been, because for most of her life Jasper had been stuck with guard duty, making sure Amethyst wasn't dead or neglected. This side that Pearl knew – it's a side of Jasper's she'd never know.

Pearl isn't done talking. "So, that's the first impression I had of Jasper. I… never had a chance to talk to her again."

"Did you believe it when they said she'd beaten new members up?"

Pearl turns to face Amethyst, who tries to keep her face as calm as she can. "The evidence was there," Pearl starts. "It's… up to now, I find it hard to explain. I was a member of the fencing team, and everyone was in trouble because of what happened. All the teams had to submit to an inspection.

"The fencing team was dissolved completely; we weren't that big. The swimming team was banned for a year from competing, and the boxing team was only allowed to compete this year. But," Pearl says, and she turns away, back to the road, "you know how it feels to… be somewhere new, where you don't have friends. It's easy to judge and say things. Your sister wasn't the only one in the whole hazing scheme. It was… something all the members did to the newbs." She shakes her head. "I can't really explain it very well right now, sorry."

"I think Lapis lost her scholarship over it," Amethyst says. Jasper's scholarship hadn't been a full ride (neither is Amethyst's), but Lapis's scholarship covered everything. Until, of course, that stupid stunt.

They don't talk for a while. The landscape outside is all blurred, as though the rest of the world isn't real, and all that's there is her and Pearl.

 _So she can talk… about some things,_ Amethyst notes, thinking drolly that she didn't have to be fucked over for Pearl to spill about Jasper. Lapis on the other hand – Amethyst had never gotten the complete story from her. For almost three years, Amethyst had let the matter die. She didn't want to push Lapis, after having lost Jasper.

"I heard from Lapis, going on about how Jasper's gonna get expelled," Amethyst says, "and I'm like, what, did she beat up a professor? And it turns out she's been paddlin' kids or something."

Lapis had been sniffling then. Amethyst hadn't noticed till she recalled it much later. She'd failed to comfort Lapis, for one thing – and for another, Lapis never cried. And she never heard Lapis sniffle like that again, not before, not after.

"They weren't being paddled," Pearl corrects. "I mean, according to the investigation, it wasn't paddling."

"Well they were doing something," Amethyst says, "And I just… blanked out. That was my big sister, you know, and after that she's just gone, never went home or nothing. I kept her room the way it is, y'know. Slept there for a while. I wasn't going to make it to college, but when I heard she'd just… gotten herself fuckin' expelled it was like, like I couldn't keep bumming around –"

 _I couldn't keep bumming around wishing I was her. Wishing I was as good as her to get a fuckin' scholarship. As good as Jasper who – okay, fine, she might have picked on kids, but only because they were wusses and wusses pissed Jasper off more than anything, I knew._

"Anyway I had this friend of mine who kept on rappin' about what a waste it'd be if I didn't try art so I guess that kinda woke me up. I don't know how I feel about it, to be honest."

They fall quiet again, passing through trees and barns and giant signs.

"She was Lapis's girlfriend, dunno if you know that."

"They were immensely popular, Amethyst, I don't know if you know that," Pearl says with a lighter, teasing tone.

"I don't, actually."

Pearl has the grace to blush. "Ah, sorry."

"Well, betya didn't know they been dating since they were in high school," Amethyst says.

"So you were the annoying little sister?"

"Well, we kinda grew up together. We're only two years apart, y'know, Jas and I. And _they_ were annoying. They – "

Amethyst drops off. She could talk about the great times – her and Lapis and Jasper driving around, or Jasper buying them alcohol (something she was always proud she could get away with). It's better to remember them that way, rather than remembering the crazy fights Jasper and Lapis had, especially when one of them was drunk, or Jasper was pissy over Lapis's time with the swim team in high school. It riled the fuck out of Jasper to have a job that didn't let her spend every god damn moment with Lapis – that's what Amethyst felt, anyway.

"They were really obnoxious, always making out. They were that kind of couple, always together. But like, it was nice, too, y'know? I grew up with Lapis on the block and it was kinda like we had our own thing goin' on. I mean, they didn't leave me out of it."

"The 'block'," Pearl says.

"Yep," Amethyst said. "Lapis was three houses away from ours, we went to school together. It wasn't a rough neighbourhood or anything or whatever they show in the movies with like drug addicts crawlin' out the walls or anything or kids sniffing stuff right out there in the open. It was just a regular block in the city. I mean, some of the street lamps were broken and we had a couple fights and yeah, it wasn't super safe but it wasn't like, super shady either."

"So… your friend Peridot grew up with you as well?"

"Ah, nope. Peridot came to live with Lapis when I was a junior. She was so damn annoying, the kind of kid you'd dump in a dumpster, a total know-it-all. And Lapis tells me to _take care of her_ like, she's asking for a beating, the way she is."

"But she didn't, because you were there."

Amethyst shrugs. It's a touchy subject for her and Peridot, how they ended up in a mutual truce. She isn't in the mood to talk to Pearl about that.

"Beach City," Pearl says, contributing to the conversation – "Well, it's nothing to write home about. There are a lot of team building resorts and kid camps at the outskirts and every year we get kids all over during summer, doing stupid pranks or vandalizing the boardwalk like they're the first punks to think of tagging some poor wall."

"What, are you the clean-up crew?"

"Never," Pearl says. "I'd just see the names on the walls and roll my eyes."

"Guess you never had a part time job in high school, huh."

"… No."

"Rich kid."

Pearl doesn't say anything to that.

/

/

 **A DEEP AND IMPREGNABLE SILENCE**

Amethyst dozes off sometime after an early dinner stopover and doesn't wake up until much later – until the car's off and Pearl's hauling a box of whatever into her house. Amethyst picks her ass off the chair, opening the door right into an argument between Garnet and Pearl, which stops abruptly when they hear the door creak open.

"Hey," Amethyst says with a weak wave. Garnet says nothing, just fixes her wraparound sunglasses before about-facing to go up the stairs.

"Hi," Pearl replies, after Garnet's gone.

They look at each other for a moment, looking for something to say.

 _Hold it in a little longer,_ Amethyst thinks to herself.

 _Fuck no, just kick her face already._

"Would you like some coffee?"

"I'm fine," Amethyst says.

 _What were you two fighting about now?_

"Okay," Pearl says, "I hope you don't mind if I make myself something. Make yourself comfortable?"

 _She needs something to do._

"Pearl," Amethyst say, "I… kinda gotta go."

 _Before I blow up._

"I should walk you to the road, at least," Pearl says. "Do you have your things?"

"It's okay," Amethyst says quickly. "I had fun," she says. "Talk to Garnet, okay?"

/

/

 _That was fucked up._

In a way though, Garnet and Pearl's argument, too muffled to be heard and carefully snuffed out one Amethyst came in, had created enough cover for Amethyst to beat it. A mixed blessing, because now that she's alone, Amethyst has no idea what to do.

 _Talk to Peridot._

 _Talk to Jenny._

 _Talk to Lapis._

She knows what they'd say.

They'd say that Pearl is fucked up and to drop everything and run. Pearl's not good for her. Pearl's doing this to her. Pearl's making her want to knock herself off with every fucking drink in the bar. She can hear Peridot, proud of her robot voice, saying _EXTERMINATE, EXTERMINATE_ and it makes Amethyst laugh as she walks to the convenience store.

Amethyst buys two six-packs. Twelve beers of the strongest stuff should be enough. The whole time she's doing it she's hoping something will stop her. She hopes that there won't be any beer. She hopes they won't have any ice. She hopes that the cashier will see through her fake ID. She hopes that it'll taste too awful for her to drink it, it's that kind of crap.

 _What the fuck are you doing to yourself?_

Once she gets into her tiny dorm room, she sweeps everything off her desk: the plastic cups clatter to the ground. The brushes, the sketchbooks, the colored pencils, Vidalia's going-away gift: a complete set of paints. She can hear her pencils rolling into the dark corners of her room, already a mess with an eternally unmade bed and clothes everywhere. She dumps her drinks on the table with a heavy _chunk_ , letting them sweat on the laminated wood.

She pops a can open. It agrees with a hiss of carbonation. She throws a slipper to the lightswitch but it fails to turn off. She walks to the entrance of the room and flicks the ceiling lights gone. Most of the mess vanishes, except for when she steps on a pen or a brush or a pencil. Alone with only a dim desk lamp, Amethyst concludes that the cheapest beer in the convenience store isn't cheap enough for her to stop.

/

/

 _I know there's something wrong inside your heart_

 _I should've cut my losses long before I knew_

 _/_

 _/_

* * *

This chapter's ending song, if you're into that sort of thing, is Phantogram's Lights. It's where the ending quote comes from.

Comments are always appreciated. If you have read this far… give yourself a clap or two!


	5. amethyst remembers

_Amethyst is fifteen, Jasper and Lapis are seventeen._

/

/

 **SUNDAY DINNER**

Amethyst hammers the last few moves out with Sour Cream before hearing Jasper's rapping on the screen door. She turns off the stereo, yanks Sour Cream's player out of the dock. By then Jasper's let herself in with her keys.

"Hey," Amethyst says, her knuckles rapping against her sister's in a quick bump, "how'd it go."

"The same," Jasper says without a smile, looking up to see Sour Cream sitting on their one good chair in the dining room.

"Hi…" Sour Cream says. At the look Jasper's throwing him, he stutters out a quick "I, uh, gotta go home–"

Amethyst elbows her sister to give room, and Sour Cream exits, the door squeaking as he runs out.

"That's Vidalia's kid, right?"

"He's cool, J, geez."

Jasper rolls her eyes and shakes her head. "Whatever," she says, opening the freezer.

"Whassat?"

"Guess."

"Chocolate? Like, chocolate ice cream?"

Before Jasper can shut the door, Amethyst wrenches her way in front.

"Cookie Cats!"

"Hands off, the damn thing's melted." Jasper slams the door, narrowly missing her sister' fingers, well-used to Amethyst's grabby hands.

"Where'd you find them?"

"Had a job outta town."

"That is so unfair! How come they got Cookie Cats?"

"Why don't ya ask the manufacturer, huh? Ame, have you even eaten dinner yet?"

"Naw, was waitin' for ya."

Jasper pulls out a phone, starts to text Lapis. Dinner time. Amethyst hopes, for a split second, that Lapis isn't at the other side of town swimming at her teammate's pool for practice. Jasper didn't like the guy, but then again ever since Lapis and Jasper got together it seemed like the only people Jasper liked were her and Lapis.

They're quiet for a bit as Jasper rummages around the fridge for leftovers. "What'd you have for lunch?"

"Eh, toasted some corned beef and the rice from the other day."

"Thought I told you to tone down on that crap."

"I forgot to cook! But, like, I went home with some menudo from the party yesterday. There's enough for the three of us."

"Party?"

"Uh, the Calderons in the next block had a nice barbecue and everything. Danny's birthday – you know Danny?" Amethyst rolls her eyes as Jasper tries to remember which house it is. "You'd know this if you went out and played like a normal kid."

Jasper doesn't answer right away, too busy looking for the tripe stew Amethyst mentioned. She finally stands up with a tupperware of stew. "Danny's your age."

"Y'make it sound like two years is such a big deal," Amethyst says. "You could have played with us."

"No thanks." Jasper shoves the tupperware into the microwave.

There's a knock on the screen door. "It ain't locked!" Amethyst hollers from the inside.

"You're gonna get broken into one of these days," Lapis says, stepping in.

"What are they gonna take?"

"The food."

"So you're the thief?"

Lapis laughs. "Maybe."

Jasper turns from where she's reheating tortillas, bending a little to kiss her girlfriend on the cheek. Amethyst rolls her eyes and moves away to set the table.

/

/

They all sit down to eat on an old dining table with mismatched chairs. For a split second, Amethyst almost puts her hands together, but shrugs that off and tears at a tortilla. Praying was her dad's thing. Jasper considers it a waste of time.

They're quiet for a while, thinking about the start of the next week. "Did I miss anything last Friday?"

"No," Lapis replies. "There's a quiz tomorrow though for physics."

"'Kay," Jasper says with a shrug.

Amethyst watches the two of them. Lapis is as pretty as she's always been, sharp eyes and a confident grin. No one else has had the balls to dye their hair blue and cut their hair short in the back but long in front. _She's cool_ , everyone says.

Jasper on the other hand – Jasper scares everyone. The long slash of pink scar tissue across her face, from one temple, to her eyes, to the other side, makes her look like something out of a disaster movie. She has other scars too, like something was trying to claw her to pieces. It was an old accident, and truthfully Amethyst doesn't remember a lot of it.

Jasper doesn't smile a lot, and she's taller than most of the guys. Unlike Lapis, who's universally deemed pretty and petite and cute, Jasper's reputation is split between _awesome_ and _fuckin' ugly._

Beauty and the Beast, some of the dumber kids said of the two of them. Amethyst once broke her nose in a fight with a dumb little shit who was stupid enough to say it where she could hear.

 _What the fuck happened, Amethyst?_

 _Eh, this ain't nothin'. Ya shoulda seen the other guy._

None of the kids were stupid enough to say it anywhere near Lapis and Jasper, of course, but not all the kids actually realized Amethyst is Jasper's sister – they're so far apart in height and build.

Lapis and Jasper have been dating for a while now, and Amethyst can't tell if that's a good thing or not. On some days Jasper seems more unreasonable – just two weeks ago she'd almost gone out to the other side of town just to bring Lapis back for dinner, she was that pissed over some poor guy's private pool, but Amethyst has known Lapis long enough to know that the older girl can be a bitch, too, and – and something else Amethyst can't really understand.

They're not what crazy lovestruck teenagers are made of, that's for sure.

"Hey," Lapis says, turning to Amethyst with a grin, "You should show Jasper that dance you were working on."

At Jasper's raised eyebrows, Amethyst throws Lapis a look. "It ain't done yet!"

"What dance thing?"

"They're making this dance to go with… I don't know what song it is," Lapis says, "I can't rap, have Amethyst sing it for you."

"Laaaaap!"

"What, you were forcing me to learn it, it's only fair Jasper has to know it too."

"It's dumb," Amethyst says.

"Jasper had a secret handshake for us," Lapis retorts. "That's dumber." Anyone else would be terrified of Jasper's glare, with how her face transforms from her forever-resting-bitch face to a full-fledged glower, but not Lapis.

"Lemme see," Jasper says. "At least you're over that artsy-fartsy phase. Ya had all those weird huge eyes."

"I still draw," Amethyst snaps.

"Ame, ya ain't gonna get a job drawin'," Jasper points out. She's right, of course. "Ya think someone's gonna buy something by…" she gestures to Amethyst, who gets it.

"People bought Frida Kahlo's stuff!"

Amethyst has no intention to do fine art, just commercial stuff, because she's _smart_ , but at this point it's a matter of principle.

"Who?" Of course Jasper wouldn't know her. Jasper never took any art electives.

Lapis gave it some thought before figuring out who it was. "Her art's ugly, though."

"Yeah, well, dancing is an art, too," Amethyst mutters.

"But people go to concerts. You could be a dancer if you keep that up."

"I'm doing it," Amethyst says, "because I like it." Her mood soured, she soaks the tortilla in the last of her sauce, stomping out and leaving after her last bite.

/

/

She could go to Vidalia's place, just to piss Jasper off. But that seems too obvious. If she had something to do she'd be able to distract herself. Instead she roams around the neighborhood sometimes drenched in dark, other times illuminated by a bright street lamp. From high above, she imagines that their block might look like a mouth with missing teeth. She keeps walking, from the corner of Carpenter and 19th Street, past a few mom and pop shops, a few neighborhood restaurants. If she walks far enough along Carpenter, she knows she'll hit an ice cream store eventually.

A block away though, she changes her mind. She already knows they only have Lion Lickers. Instead she walks back down south, to the local park. The air is colder there, and crisper. The homeless are there, and the high, but they mind their own business and she minds her own.

That's where Jasper finds her.

"Hey," she rumbles, approaching from behind.

"Fuck off," Amethyst says.

Jasper, to her credit, doesn't push it. She just sits her giant ass down, knowing how far she can go when Amethyst is in this kind of a mood. They're quiet for a while, soaking up the Sunday evening. Amethyst is cold, but she isn't about to admit it to her sister; she glances up at Jasper, who's always been taller than her, and Jasper just looks straight up into the sky despite its lack of stars.

She wants Jasper to apologize, but that's one thing her sister doesn't do. So she hopes for the second best thing, which is that Jasper won't try to justify her point. Just drop the damn thing and leave Amethyst alone if she likes hanging out with Vidalia and likes hanging out with Sour Cream.

"Can we just drop it?"

"Consider it dropped," Jasper says, swiftly.

After a pause, Jasper adds: "Lapis almost ate your Cookie Cat."

"She'd better not have."

"We split up, I sent her to the ice cream store so she could get her own."

They fall silent again after a while. "You won't leave if I ask you to, right?"

"It's late," Jasper points out.

"Sunday evening is my only chance to talk to you," Amethyst huffs, trying to be angry enough not to cry (why does she even want to cry?), "and I don't want to spend it… feeling like I've been doing something stupid!"

She looks away, anywhere but Jasper. There was a time they'd hug it out when they were younger, but Jasper's just gotten so – gone.

"It's dropped," Jasper says again. "Ame," she says, as earnest as she used to sound, "let's go back and you can show me the dance."

"No," Amethyst mutters, feeling foolish all of a sudden.

"Okay," Jasper says. "Then what do you want?"

"I wanna watch TV."

She has no idea why she says that.

"Okay then. You want me and Lapis to leave? I can go to her place."

"No!"

"Okay."

She huddles forward, into herself, arms folded, looking down into the concrete, as they walk home. She tramps into the house, goes straight to the ref to get her Cookie Cat. Lapis joins them, and they sit quietly in the living room, watching TV and eating ice cream.

/

/

 _"We'll start with the bridge, cos it's the best part. Or the hook or whatever they call it," Amethyst says, later that week, in a much better mood. "So like, when he says you want to be a," she says, taking a big step forward and stomping her foot, "big shot," she crosses her arms with a scowl on her face, "only number one," by only number one she has a single finger raised, "everybody wanna be a superstar." – she stops to look at Jasper. Satisfied that Jasper is paying attention, she continues._

 _"Right. On everybody you point to the crowd, left to right, then on super star," she angles her face and snaps her hand, dead horizontal right below her chin. "It gotta be snappy. You gotta look alluring, you know? Like you're showing off. Like you're gonna flip your hair cos you're just too cool."_

 _Jasper's bent over behind her, trying to follow. The sight of her, dead set on getting the right move – something as simple as a hand under her strong chin – makes Amethyst laugh._


	6. garnet remembers

_Garnet Jones can't sleep. Of all the things to dredge up, it has to be Jasper Alonzo and the whole boxing incident. She shouldn't have snapped at Pearl._

"I think you should at least talk to her about White."

 _And now Garnet knew why Pearl didn't want to talk about White. Talking about White would mean talking about the boxing team. And of course Pearl didn't mention that Amethyst was actually Amethyst Alonzo until she'd come back from their little roadtrip._

 _Someone has to intervene. She should give Lapis a call._

/

/

/

/

 **An excessive show of force**

/

"Hey, who let the kid in?"

Garnet rolled her eyes, listening to the kids at the kitchen bar. They were freshmen themselves, and trying really hard not to look like it, which had the opposite effect.

"Man, she's kinda cute though."

"What the hell dude she looks like someone's little sister."

Garnet tore her eyes away from her cellphone. Sure enough a pretty girl stood by the entrance, looking for a familiar face. A freshman too from the looks of it, wearing a long-sleeved cream-colored blouse with a rounded collar and a short skirt and sneakers.

This freshman must have spotted someone familiar, because her face lit up with relief as she waved. Garnet followed her gaze to across the room, to a much taller lady.

"Hey, that's White, isn't it?"

"Yeah that's the captain of the fencing team."

Garnet was grateful for the running commentary. She was still busy attaching names to faces, keeping her face glued to her cellphone while waiting for the women's swimming team.

The boys continued talking. "Aw man, that's her sister? How'm I gonna talk to her now?"

Garnet heard the sound of palm meeting face. "She's a member of the fencing team, ya dummy!"

"Seriously? She looks like, sixteen or something."

"They said the fencing team picked up a prodigy from Empire Prep."

Empire Prep definitely explained the girl's outfit. Having nothing better to do with her phone, Garnet finally paid attention to her surroundings, quickly finding the aforementioned prep kid. She sat along with the rest of the fencing team. There didn't seem to be anyone else as young as her.

"Yeah, I found her. Pearl Watterson. Man, she's just seventeen."

"Like just turned seventeen or…?"

"Like she's turning eighteen this year, dude. What the hell."

"What, let me see."

She could hear the boys jostling around whatever cellphone screen it was, reading the profile. "Mech Eng, man. She's too smart for you."

Garnet wondered how much more of this she'd have to listen to. Beyond attaching names to faces, she wasn't interested in hearing their assessment of every girl that walked into the party.

Thankfully the swimming team finally arrived. She recognized the sophomore with the long bangs – Bloop, they called her – and of course, if the fencing team picked up some fancy kid from a prep school, the swimming team had recruited Lapis Lazuli, who'd brought her high school to the Nationals last year. And then there was Hope Diamond, hoodie up like it always was.

/

/

Garnet's first class the next day was Physics 10. It was technically the second class already, but she'd missed the first in favor of attending freshman orientation (a boring choice in hindsight).

Pearl Watterson from last night sat at the front seat – she was the only one sitting there. There were few other students, mostly at the back, their feet on the desks, some scrolling through their phones, others sleeping, still others reading books.

"Hey," Garnet said.

"You're not going to ask me for my homework are you?"

Taken aback, Garnet stammered. "Uhhh, no?"

"Well, I could give you the questions. In case you didn't copy them."

"Um. Thanks. But actually I was just gonna say… uh, hi. I saw you last night, you know, with the other varsities."

"Oh! Which team are you on?"

Now that she had Pearl's attention, Pearl held her gaze, her deep-set eyes looking straight at Garnet.

"I'm Garnet. Swimming. Women's."

That was smooth.

"Pearl. Fencing." She stuck out a hand, and Garnet took it awkwardly. Did all prep school kids sound like that, or just her?

"So. Uh. You mentioned homework?"

"Oh – yes." Pearl brought out an accordion folder (labeled with all her classes) and pulled out a notepad with the neatest block letter writing Garnet had ever seen. Most of the questions were just refreshers, so it wasn't a big deal.

"You write all your notes?"

"It's been proven that writing notes instead of recording them improves retention. And it's relaxing."

Garnet blinked. Pearl didn't see it, of course. Garnet didn't see how Pearl – dressed today in another long-sleeved blouse and tight-fitting jeans and ballet flats – could hold a foil. And foils were already pretty flimsy to begin with.

Then again, what did she know about fencing and prep-school kids?

"Cool," Garnet said.

/

/

It turned out that they had two classes together, with lunch sandwiched in between.

"Want to have lunch? We can go straight to class after."

Honestly Garnet wasn't sure what she had in common with Mech-Eng-Prep-School-Fencing-Prodigy Pearl, but she figured she ought to have friends outside of the swim team, whom she barely knew anyway. She didn't go to college to just hole up with the swimmers.

They traded stories over a sandwich (Pearl) and tacos (Garnet). Pearl really was in Mechanical Engineering.

"And it's really true you're from Empire Prep?"

Pearl winced. "Yes. It's the first thing anyone asks!"

Garnet imagined her prancing around on a pony, playing polo. Or maybe she played lacrosse. Some white person's sport. It fit. It fit really well, down to her elegantly cut bob that tapered at the front and the back.

"What are you doing… here? Shouldn't you be somewhere closer to the Empire State? Like Columbia?"

Pearl shrugged. "White's part of the national team. I really wanted to come here for the athletics. The support is nice."

They stopped for a while to chew and mull stuff over.

"I've got a pretty boring story next to yours."

"You'll have to tell me before I can make that assessment."

"Well, my parents saved up for my college and I went here because I was raised nearby. I don't have that whole 'crossed several states on a crazy road trip' cred. Oh wait," Garnet said with a grin. "You probably took a plane, didn't you? First class and all that."

"Ha, ha, ha," Pearl said.

/

/

/

 **The blue court**

/

The blind item gossip threads called the swimming team 'the Blue Court', a tradition that had been going on for twenty years. Garnet didn't care about stuff like that, but the rest of the school did. Garnet was an outlier; wasn't it normal to have some school pride? Wasn't that part of the university experience? She was at a top research school with a 'phenomenal' curriculum – plus a bunch of hot, high performing athletes. They were the school's local celebrities, something to talk about, something to bond over, that wasn't coursework. Other universities had artists or dancers for their rock stars; theirs had the Diamond Club.

The Diamond Club referred to the top four performing teams. For five years now they'd been the same four varsity teams, while the lesser performing teams struggled to oust any of the four. From eldest to youngest, the Diamond Club was made of the Blues (swimming), the Whites (fencing), the Pinks (basketball) and the Yellows (boxing).

A gossip thread might read: "BD court tribute rebound with P?" Confusing to an outsider, but it made total sense with the university's self-absorbed campus population. Everyone turned out to watch the swim meets, even the friendlies. The rest of the student body rained tribute on the court, which was what they called the boys and girls that went in and out of the swim team's house(s). Garnet, being a freshman and not yet inducted into the team as a full member, was still staying in the freshmen dorms.

She split her time between the team and her classmates. The swimmers congregated in the liberal arts cafeteria during lunch, where they surveyed a portion of their kingdom and complained about course load. And if Garnet wanted to study they had their own room, too, at the gym. One of the lockers there had last year's exams for most of the gen ed subjects.

Despite how great all the support from the team was, it turned out to be a sound decision not just to hang out with the swimmers.

"I think the boxing team's like, a cult or something."

Without fail, the kids of the Blue Court loved to bicker and gossip, especially the sophomores. When they weren't rolling their eyes at the special interest groups or the acapella singers, they were picking on the rest of the Diamond Club. Garnet sometimes wondered if the other teams gave a damn, but suspected the Blues were the worst of the lot.

It came with being number one in the country, she supposed.

"Yeah, those boxers all cut their hair last year, right? Like, they were just told to do it so they did. I bet you all the froshes are gonna do that this year."

"And they get up at five in the morning for drills. Is this the military or something?"

Garnet caught Lapis Lazuli rolling her eyes. "Yeah, like we don't get up at six in the morning to swim in the lake," Lapis muttered back.

"We don't get up at five wearing the same Under Armour shirts, at least," one of the freshmen pointed out.

Garnet would have countered that nearly everyone in the table was wearing their varsity jackets except for her and Lapis. Lapis shot her a look; Garnet wished she could return it. She tried a small smile, just the slightest upturn of her lips. Lapis caught it and looked away, trying to find something else to smirk about.

Finally. It was a relief to know that there was at least one other sane freshman.

/

/

"Someone save me from these children," Lapis Lazuli muttered vehemently one day when it was just the two of them studying at the swim team's 'office.' "I swear they're the ones that keep yakking shit about the tributes online. When will BD get them to stop?"

Garnet shrugged. Lapis ran a hand through her hair. "You know what they call you when you're not around?"

"Number two," Garnet said in amusement. It didn't bother her in the slightest. After all, there was only one freshman better than her, and everyone else came after. Why should she feel bad?

"I kinda feel like I should apologize."

"What do you think they're saying behind _your_ back?"

"Nothing, they're too chicken and they finally caught on that my girlfriend's in the boxing team."

They did a few math problems before tiring of all the numbers. "I kinda thought we were supposed to get along. Like the seniors really hang out together, even when they're not in the same team."

"They're all bitching about their common fourth-year workload."

"If they don't stop bitching about it we'll have Student Affairs on our backs! We don't have an activity yet for that stupid cross-training program."

Student Affairs thought it would be marvelous for funding (and recruitment) if they had a program showing off their student-athletes, the gimmick being some kind of vague cooperative training that would show off how 'well-rounded' their athletes were.

"We're already well-rounded," a freshman had said of the program. "We party and we train!"

Lapis patted the freshman's shoulder. "I gotta say, Maddie, that was really clever of you. You really outdid yourself."

The memory of it brought a smirk to Garnet's face. Lapis was just so done with their crap, and she wasn't even a full semester in.

"Anyway, the fencing team's training this Saturday with the basketball team," Lapis said. "We're going to look really dumb if we don't find a team to train with soon."

"What about the boxing team?" Garnet grinned. She wanted a match with this girlfriend of Lapis's. They said she was really fast (for a freshman, of course.)

"Gross. No." Lapis closed her math book to punctuate the finality. "I won't show up if we train with the boxing team. Too much fodder for the rumor mill."

Garnet caught on to what – actually, _who_ – she meant. "But she's already your girlfriend."

"And we're getting along great _because_ we aren't around each other all the time."

It was an odd thing to say, but Garnet went back to math. She didn't want to push it, not with Lapis. She'd seen this Jasper with Lapis only once, having lunch close to the lake, and they looked – well, they weren't the kind to hold hands or anything like that. Lapis wasn't the kind, it seemed. Someone had seen them and taken a picture and it had blown up and since then the two of them were rarely seen together, which just made people speculate more and more about them.

Garnet erased her last equation. The expression she was working on wasn't adding up.

/

/

A routine developed: on Tuesdays and Thursdays Garnet would have lunch with Pearl. They didn't talk a lot: Pearl usually did her homework right away, which meant that Garnet did her homework along with Pearl (she wouldn't do it at all otherwise.) It didn't hurt that Pearl couldn't take seeing a wrong answer on Garnet's paper and would point out where Garnet's equations went wrong.

"I'm never taking another class like this again," Garnet said.

"There isn't any other general education subject for Physics," Pearl pointed out.

Garnet breathed in. "Yes," she said, telling herself not to explain that she meant it… rhetorically. Like if she had a choice to. But stuff like that flew over Pearl's head, most of the time, so she didn't bother.

"You have a practice match with WSU this Saturday, right?" Pearl said as she rewrote her answers from her scratch paper into her final sheet.

"Yeah," Garnet said. Truthfully she tried not to focus so much on it.

"I'll be there!" Pearl said cheerfully.

"What?" Garnet found herself not wanting to have Pearl show up. It was her first competition (well a friendly one but still) and she didn't want anyone to watch in case she locked up.

"I'll be there," Pearl repeated patiently, completely missing the point.

/

/

Garnet didn't want to compete, but she was chosen to. Most of the freshmen were not playing unless some last-minute emergency necessitated a swap out. It put her in a position she didn't want to be: envied by the other freshmen (except for Lapis, who of course was competing) and under pressure to perform. Why couldn't swimming come with less stress? She just wanted to chill in the water. Her performance was just a bonus. She wondered how the other varsity members must feel, with their scholarship choking them by the neck. She wouldn't be able to swim at all.

She was nothing like Lapis, who took everything in stride. She didn't even want to be number two. She didn't want to be anything, she just wanted to swim.

She didn't notice when she broke the strap off her goggles an hour before the competition. Shit. She had to be kidding herself. Everyone around her was excited – they were that confident of a win – but Garnet didn't hear them. She may as well have been alone in the locker room.

 _Shit,_ she thought again as she stared at her broken goggles. No one had noticed.

She didn't want to fix them here.

It was still an hour before the competition. She could lock herself up in a bathroom stall somewhere until she figured it out or until the competition was over.

"Just going out for a bit," she said to one of her teammates, stuffing her goggles into her bag.

/

/

She turned off nearly all the lights in one of the restrooms and took off her wraparound shades. The light was weak enough not to sting.

Damn, why'd she have to break the one set of goggles she had for her eyesight?

"Oh - hey."

It was Pearl, looking her usual chipper self.

"I was wondering why the lights were off," she said.

"Don't turn 'em on," Garnet growled.

"O-of course not."

Pearl approached. "Everything okay? – _Oh._ "

"Just trying to figure out how to tie this damn thing together." Garnet had tried, but the elastic was too short to fit her head – her hair, more accurately.

"I think… I have just the thing," Pearl murmured as she dipped into her handbag, taking out a bunch of tools and spilling them onto the countertop. She finally took out a bunch of elastics, both long and thick.

"Where the hell d'you get all this stuff," Garnet muttered, half-pissed, half-bewildered, trying hard not to tell Pearl to go away and let her sort it out on her own.

"They actually use this for the treads," Pearl whispered, not at all deterred by Garnet's brusqueness. "In the robotics department. For their mobile robots. You know, like tanks? I just took a few. They don't do inventory for these. I checked."

Garnet's apprehension drained sometime during Pearl's long-winded explanation. There was something ridiculous about it, Pearl finding her here, her own unwillingness to compete…

"Thanks," Garnet said, as Pearl threaded the strap in.

"They're heavy duty," Pearl said. "It's my first office theft, you know!"

Garnet couldn't help herself. "Really? I would have thought you'd start with paper clips, Macguyver."

"I could do that next. They have really nice ones in the admin office. Anyway, here you go! Don't worry, it won't come undone. I'd say good luck but I don't think you need it."

Garnet smiled at the handiwork. She tried it on. "It's perfect," she said.

/

/

(After soundly beating WSU, she later asked Pearl, "How'd you find me?"

And Pearl said, "There's only one lady's room for the entire venue.")

/

/

/

 **A hard worker**

/

The swim team didn't bother with Cross-Train Saturday, so with nothing better to do Garnet ended up at the gym's basement. Despite it being 'the basement' it was still a huge hall, deep underground with bleachers and spotlights, six courts wide. Most of the floor seemed to be rented by clubs, not varsities, kids who were more interested in just learning a sport as a hobby or a way to stay in shape rather than actually compete.

Even from the steps outside the main hall she could hear Pearl huffing at another student, her voice growing louder as Garnet entered. "No, we reserved two whole courts. Go talk to the administration if you have a problem with it, but we're setting up the piste for the rest of the afternoon."

"We? You're like, the only fencer here. And I don't see the basketball team either."

The boy was a solid head taller than Pearl, and much bulkier with most of his kendo armor on.

"The others will be along shortly," Pearl said as Garnet approached. "Now why don't you go," Pearl said, "and work it out with the building administration."

It was the kendo club. There weren't a lot of them, maybe fifteen or so. As far as Garnet knew, they were a special interest group and didn't have their own space to practice, so they bounced around from venue to venue.

Someone from the kendo club ran out of the room, brushing past Garnet. "Hey Garnet," Pearl said, brightening up. "Is the swim team training here too?"

"Uh, no," Garnet said, momentarily distracted by seeing Pearl in fencing gear, "the swim team doesn't have extra practice today."

"Why not?"

"Because we're special like that," Garnet muttered darkly. "I don't know, we look like idiots."

Though Pearl looked slightly more like an athlete in fencing gear, she was still a stick figure, waifish next to everyone else. Garnet wondered just how much padding there was on Pearl's jacket. It didn't look like a lot, but she didn't even know if it hurt to get poked with those bendy stick things they called 'blades'. (It was a mean thought, but she couldn't help herself.)

The kid from the kendo club came back announcing that the building admin were out for lunch.

"What! But we need to start setting up now!"

"Excuse me," Pearl said, hands on her hips, " _I_ need to set up now." They glared at each other. Then Pearl's face lit up. "Aha. The reservation slip!" She dug through the pockets of her bag. "It says so right here that we have Courts 1 and 2 for the whole afternoon."

The kendo team huddled behind their captain. "Ours says we have Court 2 for the whole afternoon," the boy countered, fishing out his own slip.

"Fuck," someone behind him said. "Seriously, the building admin sucks."

"I'm not waiting an hour for them to sort it out," Pearl said hotly. "The date reserved says we reserved earlier than you."

"So what, it wasn't my fault they got it wrong."

The kendo team captain wasn't going to budge. Neither was Pearl.

"We should have a duel!" some kid at the back said. Garnet scowled. It was some babyfaced student, with a sweaty face framed with glasses and golden hair that somehow reminded her of curly fries.

"I accept," Pearl said. Garnet's head whipped to face her.

"Pearl," she started to say, but Pearl cut her off.

"It'll be quicker this way." She turned to the captain. "You swear to honor our agreement. If I win, the fencing team gets both courts."

"And if you _lose,_ " the captain said, "the kendo club gets _both_ courts."

"Agreed." Pearl said, not hesitating in the slightest, and ignoring every shake of Garnet's head. "I'm Pearl."

"I'm Kevin."

They nodded to each other briefly before Pearl went back to the bleachers to prepare. Garnet tried to say something. She thought of saying any of the following: _Are you crazy? He's a senior! Are you going to fight with that stupid wavy stick thing?_

She ended up saying a garbled mix of sounds, something like: "Arfhgh!"

Pearl grinned at her. "Don't worry," Pearl said, waving cheerfully before returning to the ring that was informally forming.

"You can't use a foil," Kevin from the kendo club said. "It's… too light."

"This is an epee!" Pearl said indignantly. "And I wouldn't want to splinter your bamboo swords with it," Pearl said. "So I'll take a… a bokken if you have one." A pause. "The lightest one."

Despite the escalation that Garnet didn't approve of, she snorted.

Someone tossed her a wooden sword. "First to fifteen," Pearl said. Then she amended herself. "No, that'll take too long. First to seven. Any touch above the torso counts as a point."

"Yeah, I know your pansy-ass sport," the boy said, putting on his helmet.

"And since I wasn't able to set up the _piste,_ " Pearl added, sounding like a cross old lady, "We'll use…" they looked down at the many lines on the floor. settling on using the boundary lines for badminton. Lastly, they settled on a referee – one of the kendo kids who knew a little about fencing.

They took their positions on the playing field. The referee looked back and forth between them. "It's 'play'," Pearl said, kindly. "Or allez, but don't confuse yourself." She put on her helmet and got into position.

 _Wait a second,_ Garnet thought, _is that thing Pearl wears good enough protection for a bamboo sword?_

Unlike the boy's armor, which was plastic, fencers wore jackets and some kind of astronaut-face-mask-helmet-thing (well, that's what they looked like to Garnet). Garnet had no idea what Pearl's jacket was made of.

"Wait," Garnet said, but it was too late. The referee said "play," and Pearl opened with one giant step forward and an overhead cut that the boy barely dodged. He countered prematurely with a sloppy upward cut from below but Pearl easily backstepped her forward foot. They moved back and away from each other, waiting for an opening.

Kevin moved a step forward.

Pearl waited.

Kevin inched, taking small steps… until he opened again with a wide, horizontal cut. Pearl backed away, but he gave chase with a downward blow, which Pearl easily saw through, and, sensing an opening, she stepped diagonally into his zone, both dodging him and tapping him with a lunge.

"Uh… point!" the referee said, after registering what had happened.

One of the kendo kids suddenly found himself taking points along with the referee. The players moved back to position. Everyone was paying attention, suddenly, Pearl's quick footwork having surprised them.

Pearl won her next point faster. It was like watching one of those Asian movies where the fight was over after a single draw of the sword. They swung, and Pearl's sword hit its target.

In the real world, it was actually kind of corny (lacking the totality of an instant death) but Garnet was impressed all the same.

The boy finally got his reflexes up in the next round. Kevin opened, forcing Pearl to back away from his attack.

"She's not used to fighting on something other than that strip thing," someone behind Garnet said.

"Yeah, she ain't used to the full three-sixty."

A small crowd had formed behind Garnet, sitting on the rows above her. _Should I do something?_

As always, her indecision froze her to the spot. To the left were more kids, recording the action on their phones as best as their unstable hands allowed. Even if she stopped one –

"Woah! I mean, point!"

Garnet turned to see Pearl on the ground as Kevin retracted an outstretched foot and sword. Pearl was waving off any need for help; she took her helmet off and nodded to the guy taking points, who looked scandalized. He was looking at Kevin and shaking his head while Kevin hadn't even removed his helmet.

"Oh man, what?"

Garnet caught Pearl's eye. "It's fine," Pearl said.

Garnet barely caught what happened, thanks to the crowd above her: "–stabbed right in the chest, dude, what a hit."

"- She shouldn't parry, he's too strong, he's just trying to catch her off balance -"

Garnet caught Pearl scowling as she touched just below her collarbone. The look on her face just before she put on her mask again was unlike anything Garnet had seen before: there was a spark in her eyes that told everyone she wasn't going down without a fight.

 _She's got her pride too._

The next few points were too confusing for Garnet to make sense of, except the cool parts – Kevin learning how to dodge but Pearl giving chase – watching Pearl take wider steps and trying to move in a circle instead of deflecting Kevin's attacks – listening to the crowd shout when someone landed a hit (though Garnet booed whenever Kevin scored a point.)

Pearl took two other hits Garnet didn't like but most of all she didn't like the lucky blow Kevin landed when Pearl, probably low on stamina, had let a lucky strike through to her torso. Its impact was bad enough that Pearl almost lost her balance. Damn that helmet she wore – Garnet couldn't see her face.

The guy taking points went from staring at Kevin and shaking his head to glaring.

Garnet finally kicked into gear after that match. "You can't finish this," she said, jogging to Pearl's side. "You're in the lead, just declare a win."

Pearl glared back. "No, those weren't the terms. It's just like a… a light punch, you know," she said. "The jacket absorbs most of it."

"That thing… doesn't look very sturdy to me."

"I've more padding underneath," Pearl replied hotly. "He's waiting, Garnet, please just go back and watch."

Pearl scored her last point only a round after, winning with a tap to the helmet. The crowd – practically the whole gym at that point – cheered as Pearl turned to the ref for confirmation and fist pumped when the ref thundered "POINT!"

Pearl took her helmet/mask thing off and turned to Garnet with the biggest grin Garnet had seen from her yet before turning to Kevin. The smile she wore might have been smug, but it was softened by her eyes: there wasn't any condescension in them. She was just happy to win. She nodded to the boy, who'd also taken off his helmet and was trying not to scowl.

"Good fight," she said, holding out a hand.

"Yeah," he said, still looking sulky, only barely giving Pearl's hand a shake. "I'm just gonna go get changed." He took a few steps off to the showers, then turned and briefly bowed.

Some of the kids looked like they were waiting for a chance to talk to Pearl, but the referee and her assistant point-taker beat them to it. What they were talking about, Garnet had no clue. Next to her, she could hear the remaining kendo club kids talking, snatches of _we're screwed_ and _it's that fencing genius from the East Coast you idiots_ and other things.

Garnet sat next to Pearl as the kendo team tried to sort out what to do next.

"I'm fine," Pearl said in between deep breaths. Sweat had stuck her hair onto her forehead and cheeks. She brushed her hair out of the way and wiped her face with the sleeve of her jacket before pulling her arms out of the holes. Underneath the jacket was more padding, and the outline of a chest guard.

It was the first time, Garnet realized, that she'd actually seen Pearl's arms. They were far more toned than she expected – she didn't realize she even had an _expectation_ until it was trounced by reality.

Pearl called out to the ref, telling her she could try some other building, the music halls or whatever. The ref nodded her thanks and advised Pearl to have herself checked.

"I _am_ fine," Pearl said with a laugh. "But I stink. I'm just gonna go freshen up."

Garnet could hear someone behind her after Pearl had gone. "Man," they said. "I didn't know they had armor underneath those jackets."

"She got hit like, four times, right? That guy totally stabbed her right in the chest."

"Don't think she's grown in that department, bro." Their voices faded away as they walked towards the stairs.

 _Assholes,_ Garnet thought. She wasn't the only one, either. Some other boys above her could be heard arguing whether or not they ought to sucker punch the dipshits.

She went off after Pearl.

/

/

"Hey Pearl?"

Garnet turned right to where the lockers and showers were, only to see Pearl down to her bra and shorts sitting on a bench.

"Wah!" Pearl said, throwing her jacket in Garnet's face.

"I'm sorry!"

She heard Pearl run into a shower stall. Once safe to look, she took the jacket off the top of her head and set it down along with the rest of Pearl's things.

She should have expected Pearl to be a bit of a prude.

"Not your fault, I didn't think anyone else was coming in."

"You were pretty cool," Garnet said when the water turned off. "I didn't know fencing could look like that. Or maybe it's only that cool when it's a genius fighting, huh."

"Everyone always says stuff like that," Pearl says, getting out of the shower, already wearing her camisole and pants, " _Oh, fencing is actually hard?_ " Pearl sat next to her and began putting on her stuff. "It's a sport like any other. Just because you can't follow the foil or it looks flimsy or it's…" Pearl drifts off, "I don't know. Just because fencing is a rich kid's sport like rowing or yachting doesn't mean it isn't hard. People always think it's just about waving a blade around. You don't just pick up a sword and automatically you'll be the best in fencing you know. There's a lot of footwork. And timing. And breathing.

"And I'm not a genius," Pearl said, looking at her. "I've been fencing since I was in grade school. It's hard work and training."

"…Right. Sorry."

"No, don't be," Pearl said, putting on her jacket. "I guess I'm just annoyed he landed a touch on me. I shouldn't take it out on you."

"Does it hurt?"

"No more than the usual."

Their conversation was interrupted by the door opening. It was Diana White, captain of the fencing team, hands on her hips, an exasperated smile on her face. Pearl squawked. "I FORGOT TO SET UP THE PISTE!"

"You shouldn't be doing that all by yourself," White said. "But that wasn't what I came here for. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine! Just had… a warm up and everything."

"Someone streamed your entire fight online," White said. Pearl blushed.

"I know that I should have gone for mediation," she said, her face so bright Garnet thought it would explode. "But I didn't want to bother anyone and I…"

"You can call me up, you know." Garnet thought Pearl's face couldn't get any more red, but Pearl was proving her wrong. "I know you want to do things yourself but you could have gotten hurt and I'd rather we not have any injuries before the season even starts."

"I - I understand that. But I really am fine."

White sat down across Pearl. "Really?" she tapped Pearl's side. Pearl tried not to flinch but the flicker in her eyes gave her away.

"How's your chest?"

Garnet could see Pearl struggle to decide what to answer. "It hurts a little."

White laughed. "You need to stop biting off more than you can chew, Pearl. Look, I know how strong you are. But you need to acknowledge your limits. You're a smart kid," White said. "You shouldn't have to show off like," White's gaze flickered briefly to Garnet, "like the others.

"Anyway, you took some pretty serious blows wearing the wrong kind of equipment… If I were coach I'd be screaming at you for fighting against a bamboo sword. I'll have a medic take you to the infirmary. At least put some ice on that thing and have it checked… and you can take the afternoon off. And also the next practice, because I'm sure there's a lovely bruise down there that you insist isn't a big deal."

"But captain -"

White raised an eyebrow. Pearl shut up. "Your reflexes aren't perfect," White said, standing up. "It was a good fight… now I have to think of some kind of punishment for you so that coach doesn't get on your back. Next time," White said, "call me up. I'll send the medic in." Diana didn't forget Garnet. "And – thanks for looking out for her. Garnet Jones, swimming, right?"

Garnet nodded. Diana left with a wave.

/

/

The medic turned out to be this senior with large, fluffy pink hair. "I'm assigned to the basketball team," she said, by way of greeting. "But White asked me to come. I'm Rose. Rose Quartz."

They had a quiet corner to themselves in an office at the clinic where a subdued Pearl let herself be examined and scolded for fighting with the wrong armor. Rose Quartz insisted on ice cream, which cheered Pearl up a little, and then they spent the rest of the afternoon at the clinic, lounging around and helping Rose out when the odd student walked in.

"Is this… really okay?" Garnet asked Rose Quartz. After all, they weren't really supposed to be there. They weren't volunteers or anything.

"Why wouldn't it be? I like the company," Rose Quartz said. "And besides, I'm betting you this one would walk back to the gym if we left her alone."

"I - I don't need a babysitter."

Rose laughed. "If you keep pouting like that, people might think you do need one. But no, I need the company just as much as you do."

A wind chime tinkled. The large window behind Rose's office table looked like a portal into the clear sky. The rustling leaves outside made Garnet yawn. It could have been a lazy Saturday from many years ago, when she wasn't yet in college. It felt like home.

"Pretty chill Saturday, huh?"

"Yeah," Garnet said.

/

/

Over the next few days, videos of the fight popped up online, including an edited version of it showing the best angles. Pearl stuck fast next to Garnet or hung out with the fencing team the whole time, not wanting random people to come up to her to congratulate her or talk her up or ask her out on a date.

Garnet's relationship with the swim team continued to fall apart – not that the swim team noticed. Pearl was the hottest bit of news around, which didn't sit well with the attention-hogging Blues.

"Little fencing princess," one of the swimming team members read out loud during lunch one day. With no juniors or seniors or Bloop around, the team was free to fool around like they did most of the time.

One of the team put down her fork and knife and said, "Mother," in a prissy voice.

Across the table, another swimmer put down some papers for school, adjusted her imaginary glasses, and said, "Yes, my dear Pearl?"

"I'd like to take up fencing this year in school. And then I want to play in the Olympics."

"Of course, my dear." 'Mother' cleared her throat and picked up her cellphone, making a huge show of dialing some number. She rested her head on the phone for a beat. "Jeeves. I'd like an endowment set aside for Empire Prep. And bring up a list of candidates for fencing instructors. We'll be using some funds out of Pearl's trust." She put down the phone and looked across to the table, where 'Pearl' looked at 'Mom' in shock.

"Mother!" 'Pearl' screamed. "Why'd you have to take it out of my trust?"

'Mother' raised her eyebrows. "Because, my dear, being an athlete requires… _sacrifice._ "

The table cracked up in laughter. Even Lapis was laughing.

 _"It's not genius. It's hard work and training."_

"Geez G, lighten up," one of the swimmers said. "It's kinda true, anyway."

Garnet grunted.

"Hey hey hey," someone said, "don't make fun of Garnet's little _crush._ "

Garnet facepalmed. "Whatever," she said. The others started nudging her and throwing winks.

"What's the big deal with her anyway," Lazuli said.

"She stands out," Garnet said quietly. "Kind of like you, really."

"Pu-lease," Lapis said, "we're nothing alike."

"You kind of have the same height," someone pointed out, and within minutes the team was back into their usual character assassination. Garnet didn't bother correcting them that Pearl was, in fact, getting taller.

/

/

/

 **No big deal**

/

Shortly after midterms, the swimming team hosted a party for the Diamond Club. Garnet had no desire to go. She stayed in her room and morosely typed out a take-home exam. After several bloops on her phone, she finally picked it up with the intent to silence it until she saw what all the fuss was about: Diana White had beaten Pearl Watterson in a practice match and was roaring with laughter as Pearl tried to drink a beer. The Blues group chat was blowing up.

 _beer's too shit for her highness gotta get her some wine ya know_

 _buy some two buck chuck u little shit i dare you_

 _fuck lets do it lets feed it to her haha_

 _ZINFANDEL_

That was enough to make Garnet click that final send message to her prof.

/

/

Garnet stormed into the Blue House, ignoring most of the high fives in her direction. She finally made it to the living room and quickly spotted Pearl, all red and giggling while listening to someone.

"Pearl!"

Pearl turned to her. Her face lit up with the biggest smile. "I kept asking the swimming team when you were going to show up!" She giggled and introduced Garnet to the lady she was talking to, punctuating every sentence with a giggle.

Garnet tried to smile.

"Are you okay, Pearl?"

"I feel great!"

"I told you," the manager said smugly (her name never registered in Garnet's head.) She turned to Garnet. "You should have seen her pouting all the way to the house."

"Drinking's bad!"

"Says the lady that wouldn't quit chugging the jungle juice."

Pearl tried to scowl. A pout came out. "I'm cutting myself off," she said.

"Good choice, princess," Diana White said from behind.

"This is your fault, you know." Pearl said. "It's her fault," she said to Garnet.

"Yes, it is. And look, you're a lot more relaxed. You might even land a touch with your drunken master moves," White said with a wink.

"I want a rematch!" Pearl shouted.

The manager must have picked up on Garnet's confusion. "Pearl's been wanting to spar with White since forever. She didn't want to come. White said okay as long as Pearl could beat her. Pearl couldn't land a single touch, so White brought her over. Good thing too. Pearl's just… too polite, you know? Too nice, too serious. She's gotta learn to let her hair down. But yeah, she's had enough."

"You'll get a rematch in the morning," Diana said. She turned to Garnet and handed her a cup. "I knew you'd show up," she said with a wink. "Don't be such a stiff, Garnet Jones, your teammates are worried about you."

"Garnet's not a stiff," Pearl said, though White had already walked away. "She's cool."

The Manager had the gall to ask: "Are the two of you dating?"

"No," Garnet replied irritably. She was sick of hearing that crap from the Blues.

"Then can I have lunch with you tomorrow, Pearl?"

"Onyx – what! Don't – don't say things like that."

"I'm not kidding," Onyx said, and Garnet suddenly realized how very out of place she was.

"I'm gonna go get a refill," she said, though no one heard and she didn't need a refill.

/

/

Garnet had never felt stupider in her life. Even the Pinks were talking to Pearl now, Pearl having been fully assimilated into their circle of couches. They were playing some kind of card game. Pearl was advising someone from a higher batch, her hand on the player's shoulder.

"Ugh, she's a noisy drunk," Lapis said, sitting next to Garnet. "You should have warned us."

"She didn't drink before this," Garnet said. "She's not that kind of kid."

"Lame."

"What is your problem with her, anyway?"

"What the hell is an Empire Prep kid doing _here_? You know she doesn't need that scholarship."

"You're so sure she has one."

"She does," Lapis said. Garnet had no idea how she learned about that, but Lapis hung around the swim team more and probably heard it somewhere.

"She deserves it," Garnet said. "She works hard."

"A lot of kids work hard," Lapis replied. "And they don't get nothing."

Garnet was slowly scratching Lapis off her reasons to stay on the swim team. Lapis wasn't wrong, but Garnet didn't agree on who ought to get a scholarship… or who ought not to get one.

"Man, everyone just eats her act up," Lapis said. "Even you."

"Don't be a mean drunk, Lapis Lazuli."

"I'm not fucking drunk."

/

/

Garnet caught Pearl leaving sometime at one in the morning.

"You're going?" Lapis said, senses dulled with can after can of Bud.

"Will you be okay?"

"This is the fucking Blue House," Lapis said. "Go run after your damned princess."

Garnet scowled and left. Outside their house, she suddenly realized that Pearl wasn't alone: White and Onyx both flanked her.

Pearl must have heard the door close, because she turned.

"Going home?" she asked.

"Let's go together."

"Great! Less exercise for the aged," Diana said, waving Pearl goodbye. For a moment, it looked like Pearl was going to do something with Onyx, but Onyx ruffled her hair and turned away.

"Don't believe the captain," Pearl said as they walked away from the seniors. "It's not fair, how she's faster than me."

In her slightly drunk state, Garnet had to agree. The fencing team captain could usually be seen dressed in chinos and a button down shirt and flip-flops. She looked more like she was going fishing than fencing. She didn't look like she spent a day in her life training for a sport. Out of the four captains of the Diamond Club she seemed to care the least about winning or losing, which made the fencing team popular despite how small they were. She made winning look effortless, like Lapis Lazuli did, but minus the sass, the I'm-better-than-everyone-and-I-know-it attitude that Lapis wore everyday, that she took off only when she was with Garnet (and maybe her girlfriend).

"Thanks," Pearl said quietly. In the cold, her words came out with a puff of air. Garnet took off her jacket. Pearl took it gratefully. Somewhere between the Blue House and their dorm Garnets arm found itself wound around Pearl's.

"Thanks," Pearl said quietly from where her head rested close to Garnet's shoulder. "For putting up with me."

Garnet swallowed. What was she supposed to say to that?

"I know I'm a pain sometimes," Pearl said. "I'm… too much. I try too hard sometimes, don't I? It's embarrassing. I know I'm a handful."

 _There's nothing to be embarrassed about,_ Garnet thought but couldn't say. She only heard the crunch of their shoes against the pavement as the end of their conversation drew nearer and nearer with each step.

"Onyx asked me out," Pearl said.

"Uh huh."

"Did you know I was gay?"

Garnet struggled with the answer. "…Is it supposed to matter?" And then Garnet wondered if that was the right way to say what she felt. Pearl's grip on her arm tightened.

"She just asked me out like that," Pearl said. "No big deal. I know it sounds pathetic," she continued, with a smile that didn't meet her eyes, "but I'm happy to be here. I never even had the chance to freak out."

"Good," Garnet slurred, "You got lotsa stuff to freak out over but that shouldn't be one of 'em."

There was nothing but their breathing and the sound of the lights and their steps on the pavement. And there was warmth too, between them, and relief, and peace for that evening.

/

/

/

/

\- chapter end -

 **AN:**

If you are done guessing who is who, here you can check if you got it right.

Hope Diamond - Blue Diamond (named after the diamond, yea, like everyone says in fanon)

Diana White - White Diamond, just call her White.

"Bloop" - Blue Pearl - Blue + p.

Garnet's being in the swimming team references Sapphire's origin as a member of BD's court. Her tendency to freeze up before a competition (which affects her performance) is, you guessed it, also a reference to the 'Sapphire' side of her personality.


	7. evening

**WHO IS SHE?**

As Garnet takes the bus to Bloop's apartment in the city, she remembers one night at the Blue House - it was one of the rare times she ever saw Jasper.

/

/

 _Jasper Alonzo lay slumped over the folding table, head on her folded arms. Her face was framed by her hair. The table was littered with beer cans. Judging from the upturned chairs, Jasper had had company, maybe the rest of the boxing team. Probably they were already passed out somewhere inside._

 _"Can't believe anyone can sleep out in this cold," Pearl muttered. She took off her new letterman - black with a white 'V' from her shoulders to her chest - and laid it over Jasper. It was too small, but Pearl didn't notice._

 _"Pearl," Garnet said, "Do you even know who that is?"_

 _"Yes? Jasper Alonzo?"_

 _It seemed as though Pearl knew everyone after going to a party. A sharp stab of pain took Garnet by surprise; why should she begrudge Pearl her happiness? If the Whites were less petty than the Blues (likely because there weren't many freshmen or sophomores in the team to begin with) then it was something to be happy about. At least Pearl had found her place._

 _Garnet took her cellphone out. "We shouldn't leave her out here," Garnet murmured. She didn't want to lift Jasper, nor did she know anyone in the boxing team that could help. She texted the alternative: Lapis Lazuli. "Let's just wait for reinforcements."_

 _Pearl sat across Jasper. She picked up a beer can and started shaking it. She poured what little remained into a cup which she was still holding onto. (She had a habit of holding onto things when she was intoxicated.) She did this with the rest of the cans on the table. Garnet considered reminding Pearl of her aversion to germs, but it was too funny to watch Pearl's face scrunch up in displeasure whenever a can was empty. She looked forward to teasing Pearl about it in the morning._

 _After running out of beer, Pearl too slumped over on the table, just like Jasper. The cold and alcohol beer were getting to her. She reached out and pulled a strand of Jasper's hair away from her face._

 _She looked up to Garnet. "Do you think it's true," Pearl asked, "that the boxers get their hair cut?"_

 _"I don't know," Garnet said._

 _"It would be such a waste," Pearl said. "Not everyone has fluffy, cat-like hair."_

 _Lapis showed up a few minutes later, a scowl on her face. She hadn't come to this party, using exams as an excuse. Like Garnet, she didn't give a damn for the scene. But there she was, and she'd probably have to say hi to the rest of her team. She couldn't be a snob._

 _"Thanks," she muttered._

 _"We can carry her inside," Garnet said._

 _"It's okay. Thanks again."_

 _It was hard to read Lapis's face. With most couples, Garnet could expect - well, something. Maybe relief, maybe a smile. But Lapis's face was blank now that she faced Jasper._

 _Garnet plucked Pearl's jacket off of Jasper. "C'mon Pearl," she said._

 _"Okay," Pearl said. She smiled in Lapis's direction, but Lapis didn't look at her._

 _"Hey - Garnet," Lapis said. "Who's inside?"_

 _"Some swimming alumni."_

 _"Bah," Lapis said. "Gotta pay my respects, huh."_

 _A short distance away, Garnet texted Lapis:_ You should thank Pearl, too.

 _She doubted that Lapis ever did._

/

/

"It's too early for this," Lapis says. Outside, the sun's just started rising. Garnet takes in the sight of her: Lapis looks like she's been drinking all night, her face sallow and oily and her hair stuck up everywhere.

"We used to wake up much earlier."

"Don't remind me," Lapis mutters.

Garnet nudges a plate of toast across the table between them. "It's for you. Fresh from the kitchen and all."

"I'll have the water."

Lapis turns her seat to face the window. She takes her time drinking, setting the glass down while looking outside, thinking. Garnet waits; this isn't her territory.

"It's too fucking early," Lapis says again, leaning into her chair. She hasn't slept the whole evening, Garnet knows, and is probably hung over. "You're not gonna give me an hour, are you?"

"If I come back in an hour you'll be gone and I'll have to hunt you down in someone else's apartment."

Lapis laughs. "You make me sound so pathetic."

Garnet isn't here for the small talk. "Why didn't you tell Amethyst who Pearl was?"

That seems to wake Lapis up. She looks to Garnet. "So you've met Amethyst, huh." She took another sip to buy herself some time.

"You know the first time I heard Amethyst mention Pearl I thought it was a pretty bad joke and laughed it off to myself. Well I tried to give advice," Lapis says with a laugh, "though the whole time I couldn't believe what I was hearing out of my own fucking mouth."

"You knew they were dating and you didn't say anything."

"Dating, my ass. You don't know Amethyst. All it is, is just a fling. Let them tire themselves out and we can forget about it. There's no need to dredge up the past."

"And what if they don't break up as soon as you think they will?"

"Then maybe Pearl should talk to Amethyst about who _she_ is." Lapis shakes her head. "Why do you even care, Garnet? It had nothing to do with you. And Jasper was just" - she struggles to find the word, or maybe to admit it to herself - "just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Knowing about the whole thing... what good is it going to do for their 'relationship'? As it is, the past has nothing to do with... whatever the fuck they're doing. I'm pretty sure they're doing badly on their own."

They're quiet for a moment. Lapis sits on her chair. She was always number one, and even now, slumped with an oversized T-shirt, she still looks like royalty, like some kind of queen in exile. Maybe it's the faint red of the morning sun, how she stares into the outside like she'll never be let out of the room she's locked herself into.

"I don't get why you have to tell Amethyst."

Garnet almost couldn't believe that Lapis hadn't - but she knows Lapis can be selfish, that she curls in on herself, that talking about Jasper is the one thing that sets her off, that makes her defensive, that makes her secretive.

"You told her next to nothing about why Jasper was expelled. Maybe you should think about her own closure."

"Bullshit, there isn't any. Even if she knew the whole thing, Jasper's still gone."

"That's for Amethyst to judge, isn't it?"

"And you're going to tell her now? Last time I checked Amethyst couldn't even figure Pearl out. Shouldn't you wait for them to sort out their shit before piling on all this crap about Jasper?"

"I can always talk to Amethyst and decide for myself, can't I?"

"I can't believe you have more sympathy for someone you barely know over... me!"

"So talking about Jasper is unsympathetic to you now? Listen to yourself, Lapis, I know you're not that petty."

"Oh, I'm pretty fuckin' petty. I _am_ a Blue, after all. "

"You didn't have to be."

"Well I was." Lapis glares at Garnet. "Some of us didn't have a choice."

The words cut. It reminds Garnet of why she was spared the fallout: just luck. Pure luck.

"You know, when Amethyst brought Pearl up, I remembered the old captain. Diana White? Everyone thought they were so damn cute. I never found out what happened to her."

"You think I'm going to tell you just so you can satisfy your curiosity? That's Pearl's business."

"Ah, Garnet, you're always so damn protective. Believe it or not, I don't hate Pearl. Well. Not anymore."

Garnet isn't sure she believes Lapis. But perhaps Lapis is angrier at herself than at Pearl.

"She kinda got what she deserved, anyway."

Garnet smashes her fist into the table strong enough to make the plate clatter and jump. Lapis tries to put up a brave face by scowling, but she's shocked, and Garnet knows it. "What do you know - Pearl didn't deserve anything that happened to her, you -" Garnet shakes her head to take the swear out of her tongue. "I'm out of here."

"Wait," Lapis says. "Look, if... if anything mattered at all to you, I - I'm asking you not to tell Amethyst."

Garnet can't believe her ears. She went here to tell Lapis that Amethyst ought to know, to make Lapis understand that keeping someone in the dark like that was not okay - and here Lapis is, petulantly refusing. This is as close to begging as Garnet's ever seen her. It makes Garnet reconsider the fallout that will inevitably happen between Amethyst and Lapis. And the fallout between Amethyst and Pearl, more importantly.

"Can't do that," she says. "Unless you tell Amethyst yourself. I told Pearl the same thing."

The look on Lapis's face is her answer. Garnet shrugs and says, "I'll give you a week. If you change your mind, talk to her yourself."

 _Damn it Lapis,_ she thinks to herself as she leaves the room. _Why?_

/

/

/

The first time Garnet saw Lapis compete, she couldn't help but see Pearl's face from the kendo match, scowling as she checked her collarbone. Lapis had the same look as she lined up to swim, the same furrow of the brow, her eyes on the prize, looking towards a future only she could make into a reality with her skill.

It was their pride. They both had it, the single-minded desire to win no matter what, a drive that broke through fear, through nervousness, through doubt or the temptation to hide. It was all-or-nothing for the both of them. And they would never be nothing.

Garnet would later wonder what winning meant to them. She suspected it meant the same thing to them both.

/

/

/

 **SECOND CHANCES**

On the first day Amethyst got back from the trip, she could barely get up in time for her first class. Resigning herself to class on an empty stomach, she took a shower and walked out of her room, stepping on the odd pencil she'd left from her mess last night. As she turned to lock the door, she saw a plastic bag, her name written on it. She didn't recognize the handwriting but it definitely wasn't Pearl's.

Inside was a burrito and a carton of milk. Amethyst wasn't about to question it. If someone wanted her to fart in art class, she was fine with that. She tore into breakfast and told herself she'd think about it in the afternoon.

School was a relief for the remainder of the week. But as for here and now, a lazy Saturday with no looming exams:

"You're not even trying," Peridot says.

"Sorry," Amethyst says contritely. She can barely concentrate on the co-op mission or whatever it is she's doing in this game of Peridot's.

Peridot turns the console off and flops on the bed. "You haven't given me a status report." Amethyst sticks to the bean bag chair, allowing herself to sink into it. "Aren't you gonna rave about how much fun you had with Pearl?"

Amethyst's neck lolls over the edge, her eyes staring at the ceiling. She doesn't like the constant, dull throb in her chest anytime she remembers it.

"Amethyst?"

"Yeah?"

She can barely even hold a thought in her head.

"You okay?"

Nope.

Nope.

...Nope.

"Amethyst!"

"Still alive," Amethyst says, a reflex answer.

"What, did she fuck your brains out of order?"

Metaphorically, yes. Literally, yes. It hurts so bad that she has to laugh.

"Dammit, Amethyst, get your head out of the gutter!"

Right. She's supposed to tell Peridot how used and awful she feels. She gets as far as opening her mouth.

"I'm hungry," she says, instead.

For some crazy reason, she's afraid of Peridot saying, _"What do you expect? Of course she fucked you over. Have you seen yourself?"_

It's a crazy thought. Peridot doesn't think like that.

/

/

/

The next week passes by. Amethyst sends one lone message to Lapis, but that goes unanswered. With nothing else to do, she goes to class and zones out of conversations.

And now, on a Saturday she's hoping to spend with Peridot, yet another mysterious breakfast shows up on her doorstep. But this time there's a number and a name: it's been Garnet all along.

She's about to get dragged into something, isn't she?

/

/

/

They meet up late in the afternoon at the edge of the school. More specifically, they meet outside one of the farthest buildings. It's windy as hell as they meet on one of the tables outside. Just one building away, a large pep rally or whatever is taking place for one of the school athletic teams. It does not help Amethyst's mood.

"Hey Amethyst."

"Yo."

Amethyst stirs the hot coffee she bought from inside. _I'm not in the mood for any bullshit,_ she wants to say, but something stops her. Garnet doesn't look like she's here to waste anyone's time.

"I wish I knew how to say this," Garnet mutters. "How are things with Pearl?"

"Bad."

And truthfully, Garnet isn't someone Amethyst wants to talk to about it. Who the hell is Garnet, anyway?

"Bad like breakup bad?"

"Bad like it-ain't-your-business-to-talk-to-me-about-it bad."

"I'm sorry to pry," Garnet murmurs. "I know it's not my place."

"Then why are you here?"

"I... I'm not really here to talk about Pearl. But. I sort of understand. Pearl... Pearl can be hard to talk to, sometimes."

"Sometimes? How about all the goddamn time!" Amethyst's shout cuts through the wind. Just as soon as the anger flares up, it dies down into a sinking feeling that Amethyst pushes away.

"You'd better not be here to like, argue on her side."

"I wasn't going to," Garnet says. "Pearl's my friend. I know things aren't easy. You can still break up with her, you know?"

It always feels like she's being pulled in two directions when it comes to Pearl. Amethyst scowls. She knows everyone will give her the same advice. Even Garnet's putting it on the table - and shouldn't Garnet be arguing for Pearl? But she isn't. How fair of her.

"I could," Amethyst says. "I probably should. I don't know."

She runs a hand through her hair to keep it from getting into her face as she sips at her coffee.

"I didn't come here to talk to you about Pearl," Garnet says. "But I brought some... well, they're pictures. I actually wanted to talk to you about Jasper, but Pearl's here too."

Jasper. Amethyst remembers now: Garnet's the current captain of the boxing team. She knows things.

"Fuck Jasper," Amethyst mutters. But the first photo - an actual physical photo, not just on a cellphone screen - isn't of Jasper.

"Shit," Amethyst mutters, despite herself. "That's...Pearl?" She holds it up and stares. The kid smiling back at her looks way too young to be in college.

"She looks younger n' me when I was a freshman."

"She was seventeen. And she was pretty short, too, believe it or not."

Garnet shows her another picture, this time with several people in it. Sure enough, Pearl's more than a head shorter than Garnet. "Holy shit," Amethyst mutters. "What kinda growth spurt was that?"

She picks up a few more photos from Garnet's pile. "Man, even her hair was different. And her cheeks were kinda round. And what the hell is that fucking pout, waste of a photo..."

Amethyst stops at the next photo - It's Jasper. Amethyst almost crumples the photo paper. It's a medium shot of Jasper's profile, her face in a deep frown. It's a typical Jasper look, a pre-match scowl that Amethyst recognizes.

"Was she your... teammate?"

"I was on the swim team when I was a freshman, remember?"

Amethyst had forgotten about that. "So you knew Lapis?"

"We used to be friends," Garnet says. And then she swiftly follows up, "Has Lapis texted you all day?"

Amethyst can recognize regret, especially when it's glossed over so quickly like that.

"Fuck knows where Lapis is."

There are a few other photos of Jasper. Truthfully, Amethyst doesn't know if she'd burn them or keep them. She stops at the last one: it's a rare picture of Lapis and Jasper together. Whoever keeps taking these pictures takes them candid.

"That was after a swim meet," Garnet says.

Lapis had a half-smile on, that might have seemed stingy, but Amethyst knew that smile. She didn't like sharing whatever she had with Jasper to the world. Their relationship was guarded; both parties knew it was fucked up especially back they were younger - and Lapis knew that the less people knew about them, the more they'd be left alone. Amethyst doesn't want to think about how close they might have come to destroying each other. She wasn't in on that part of their relationship, however good her friendship with them became after.

And anyway Jasper followed Lapis's lead in keeping things between them, especially during their lone senior year that they'd gotten past their crazy fight, break up, and make up cycle: if Lapis was affectionate, then Jasper might be a little more open, and when Lapis closed off, Jasper wouldn't touch her.

Those two years had been the most peaceful time of Amethyst's life. Vidalia had been the bright spot of Amethyst's middle school and early high school days, but it was still different to have Jasper and Lapis over every Sunday, no fighting, the gas working, their dinner cooked.

"Sorry," Amethyst says suddenly, realizing that she's been ignoring Garnet.

"Take your time," Garnet says.

For the first time since they met, Amethyst doesn't mind if Garnet knows what she's thinking. "It's... it's really from a different time, huh."

"It is," Garnet says. Amethyst rifles through some of the other pictures. Pearl's in one of them, looking so excited and so, so young it's hard to believe she's in college.

"God she's such a prep school kid," Amethyst says. Pearl's wearing a skirt and tennies in this one, and if Amethyst isn't feeling kind she'd say Pearl ought to be in one of those dumbass ads for East Coast old money brands. She could be in one of those obnoxious pictures with people screaming as they jump off a yacht like it's the most exciting thing they've ever done in their cushy lives.

But Amethyst knows that comes from a place in her head where she knows she can't even compete with Pearl's background.

"She came from Empire Prep."

"I know," Amethyst says, and saying it makes her feel bad.

"We don't have to talk about anything now," Garnet says, as though she can tell what Amethyst is feeling. "I just... wanted to show you this."

"What was Jasper like in uni?"

"I can't say. I didn't know her very well."

"She used to go home twice a month," Amethyst says. "After she left for college. I kept telling her things were fine."

"So you two were close?"

"Not when we were younger," Amethyst admits. "She used to rip out my sketchbooks," she says. "I mean, I dunno. But yeah, we were sisters." Amethyst tries not to think about how bad things used to be between them. Jasper changed, didn't she? She got better, didn't she? They'd gone so far from fighting to being sisters. And anyway, Amethyst had no choice but to forgive, or forget, or ignore. She and Jasper were stuck in the same boat after their father left. It was better to remember Jasper the way she'd remembered her when Pearl asked.

And yet Amethyst had no doubt in her mind Jasper would have gotten involved in beating people up. Jasper wasn't perfect, and her temper might have toned down but seeing Amethyst cry used to set her off. Jasper couldn't stand wimps, couldn't understand art, and absolutely hated crying. It was something Amethyst couldn't help when she was younger, but when she'd gotten it under control things eased up between them.

She can still remember what the kitchen smelled like. And how Jasper always managed to find Cookie Cats when she made a long haul out of town.

Amethyst looks up to Garnet. Garnet herself is looking at few of the photos, lost in thought. _She's okay when she's not giving any shitty advice,_ Amethyst decides.

"Pearl only told me a few days ago about her fencing days."

"It was her life," Garnet says. Amethyst takes a good long look at Pearl-in-the-picture, wearing a white jacket and a white glove, holding a blade. There are three others in the photo, all upperclassmen, looking pleased with themselves.

 _It was her life,_ but Pearl hadn't said a word to Amethyst about it, without Amethyst prying. Unreasonably, it stings. Then again, Amethyst stings all over.

She gives the photos back to Garnet, but Garnet tells her to take what she wants.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Does Lapis... have any of these?"

"Not that I know of."

Amethyst takes the ones with Jasper in them.

"Is it okay if I take this one?" It's the picture of Pearl with the other fencers.

"Sure."

"So... what were you going to tell me?"

Garnet rearranges her shades. "It's funny... I came here thinking I'd talk to you about it right away. I never know if what I'm doing is right. I don't know if... well, if now's a good time."

"But it's about Jasper."

Garnet nods.

"And Lapis?"

"Yep."

"And Pearl?"

"...Yes."

"You're not gonna tell me something weird like they dated or something are you?"

"Fuck no."

 _Everyone was in trouble because of what happened. All the teams had to submit to an inspection._

"Did this have to do with Jasper... beating kids up?"

"There's more to it than that, but yes."

"I'm not gonna hate you after I hear you out, am I?"

"Any more than you already do?"

Heh. Nope, Garnet isn't that awful. Amethyst's reply is a wry smile.

"There's a chance you'll hate me more than you do now, yeah. But if you don't want to hear me out, you don't have to."

"Yeah, you tell me that after dropping all those hints," Amethyst says. "I'll hear you out, can't be any worse than the week I've had."

"Alright. How about tomorrow?"

"So you're not ready today, but you'll be ready tomorrow?"

Garnet chuckles. "Maybe."

"Sure. I ain't goin' nowhere."

Garnet pauses. She looks like she wants to pry - but she stands to go. "Thanks," Garnet says. "For giving me a chance."

/

/

/

Chapter 8 will be posted over the weekend. Thanks. Reviews are always welcome.


	8. the small hours

I planned most of the plot reveals for this 8 months ago. I hope they work out. Warnings for hazing apply.

/

/

 _run like hell_

/

/

Amethyst sketches out a few landscapes. She's back where they were yesterday, though this time she leans against a rock next to a tree. She keeps her hoodie up in an attempt to lessen the wind whipping at her face. Maybe she should have told Garnet to meet inside this time. She could use some interior perspective practice.

She can't get Pearl out of her mind, not after those pictures. Damn. Pearl looked like a different person. Amethyst can't help but wonder what it would have been like if they'd met that way.

"Hey," Garnet says, from behind the tree.

"Ahoy there."

Garnet folds her legs into a cross, sitting next to Amethyst. "Nice sketches."

That's what people say when they don't know how to draw. Still, Amethyst accepts the compliment and puts her stuff away.

"Hey, uh," Amethyst says, "can I ask you about your eyes?"

"Sure."

"Did you always have to wear shades like that?"

"Kind of. My light sensitivity got worse when I grew older."

"So you don't... see vivid colors or stuff like that."

Garnet laughs. "I can take off my shades for short periods of time."

And she does, revealing two different eye colors. She winks and puts the shades back on.

"Your eyes...?"

"It's called heterochromia."

"So like, is that the only part of you that's hetero?"

Garnet chuckles. "Maybe."

To Amethyst's surprise, Garnet brings out a can. "You drink?"

"This isn't a beer, sorry to disappoint."

'Course. Garnet's straight-edge all the way, Amethyst should know better. They don't rush into talking: Amethyst draws, Garnet drinks. It's a friendly kind of silence, Amethyst decides.

"What did Lapis tell you about Jasper's expulsion?"

And there goes the friendly silence.

Jasper's expulsion. The first thing that came to mind was their mother showing up a week after Amethyst had already taken the bus all the way to university to sort things out. The old hag was a furious mess, and expected Amethyst to wait on her hand and foot. Like she'd ever contributed to Jasper's college fund at all. After bitching about it for a few days she left, and it was back to the norm with their mother: sometimes money would come in, mostly it wouldn't.

But Amethyst backtracks to the week before her mother was there, when she first heard about Jasper.

"I rode the bus all the way here," Amethyst says. "Lapis told me the night before and I guess I panicked. I hadn't heard anything from Lapis in like two weeks. I mean, we used to talk regularly. Two weeks was kind of long. So I saw her and we met with a guidance counselor."

The guidance counselor hadn't expected someone who'd just turned seventeen to pop up about Jasper Alonzo's case. Amethyst explained that their mother was currently out of state, which could have been a lie, but it was what her mother had told her to say, and it was the easiest way to keep social workers off their back.

"What did the counselor say?"

"She said that Jasper was involved in some kind of hazing, but that specifically, she was trying to cover it up. There was something about being suspended and leaving the premises and..." Amethyst trails off.

"Jasper's on the run," Amethyst says. "She was s'posed to wait for a trial but she got away. I think... Lapis might have had something to do with her getting away, but..."

But Lapis could barely speak. Amethyst had never pressed the issue. It had taken months to pry out bits and pieces from her. They picked up from there and Lapis tried, Amethyst knew (or thought she knew, but what does she know now?), she tried to make sure Amethyst was okay.

That's probably why it hurts that Lapis has been gone for so long. It hurts that Garnet's talking to Amethyst, not Lapis.

"Oh fuck," Amethyst says. "You're not some fuckin' mole for the police, are you?"

"Of course not!"

"Well good, cos Jasper never showed up to say good-bye." It feels like she's said too much, but Garnet doesn't seem to notice.

Hesitantly, Garnet asks, "Do you know if... Jasper ever liked the boxing team?"

"Liked it? She loved it so much she was always talking about training. She was always a meathead. I mean, like, she doesn't get all excited but... when she was at home you could tell she just wanted to be back in uni doing something."

Amethyst could really use some booze. Damn Garnet for being so boring. Amethyst breathes in the crisp air, the smell of grass.

"I didn't want to know anything about it for a long time," Amethyst says. "I'm not sure, but I think the admin was trying to keep it hush hush, at least as quiet as they could get it. I did get some names of Jasper's teammates who were expelled along with her and... I found out that the investigation had started because of this boxer kid that had gotten beaten up so bad she showed up at the city hospital with a burst appendix."

Garnet nods. "Lapis and I... well, actually, a group of us had a small truce that we'd never ever talk about what happened to the boxing team, because we wanted to protect the people who were involved. She should have told me about you - and she didn't -" Garnet breaks off.

"You don't like Lapis, huh?"

Garnet shakes her head. "The opposite. We used to... we used to be okay."

And yet Lapis never mentioned Garnet back when she was a freshman.

"Did Jasper have something to do with that?"

Garnet shakes her head. Takes a deep breath. "No, we split before Jasper. I didn't exactly like the swimming team. It's a long story."

"Sure. Ain't got nothing but time."

"There were four really popular teams on the campus a few years ago."

"I know that part," Amethyst says. "The Diamond Club, right?"

Garnet nods. "The four captains were close friends. Any time another team needed someone for an event, they could rely on each other."

Basically, the Diamond Club was like some kind of frat? Sorority? Both? Or more accurately some kind of alliance of sports orgs, except they actually had some skill to be proud of.

"I never really understood the appeal."

"You ever watch the Olympics?"

"Well, yeah," Amethyst says. "Like, I get the physical appeal, aright? I get that. Just. They're so annoying. It kinda negates their good looks."

"Mm, were you the edgy art kid in highschool? Only alone because you're too cool to hang out with the rest of the class?"

"No, I used to dance," Amethyst says. "The dancers were cooler than the jocks, for the record."

"Then you do understand. You may think you're not like the jocks, but it's the same thing. Dancing made you cool, didn't it? And you get to trash talk the jocks and hang out with friends."

"The jocks deserved it," Amethyst jokes. "And we never thought of hitting a new member or anything like that. I mean, we played pranks on them and had some newbs do stupid shit but nothing serious. You know, you just make 'em dance in front of the girl they like and show up to class wearing something weird and make them drink some gross shit. Nothing like paddling people, that's just fucked up."

What if, though? What if she'd been put on the spot like that, when she was new to the dance club. It's easy to say you'd never do something so stupid or agree to anything dumb but - what if? Jasper had agreed to God-knows-what, and Jasper was not easily moved. Jasper was strong. Stronger than Amethyst, even if Amethyst hated to admit it.

To her left, Garnet picks up the story. "Anyway. Going back to uni, three years ago - the boxing team had their initiation rite sometime around the second semester. It was at the boathouse... the one out there. At night, of course." She gestures vaguely to the far bluff some distance away. Below the bluff sat a massive boathouse.

Amethyst nods. "Yeah I know that building." The boathouse is far enough that no one usually goes there to chill when there are so many other places to hang out in.

"Most of the teams have their initiations there," Garnet says. "Because it's so far away. It just so happened that... someone saw what the Yellows were doing. It wasn't on purpose, it was just an evening walk. The initiation itself seemed, well, similar to what you've described - keeping everyone blindfolded, making them follow some rope through the rocks, making them jump and roll over and jog in place. I hate that sort of thing, but like you pointed out - 'everyone' in a club goes through it.

"Anyway, inside the boathouse, we later found out that they were getting the freshmen drunk - they'd made some kind of energy drink with booze and if they felt like it, you could be stuck there drinking glass after glass of whatever they felt like making you try till you barfed or passed out.

"And after that, if you hadn't passed out - it wasn't even inside the boathouse - they'd lead you out to this ring or whatever. They had two freshmen blindfolded trying to land a punch on each other. First they'd lead the freshmen to each other and have a feel for where their 'opponent' was. And then they'd start the fight with the upperclassmen going 'to your left,' or 'throw a punch right in front of you' and - and - well, you had two stumbling freshmen who were maybe drunk and the whole thing was just something done for laughs. They didn't stop after a punch, either. They had to keep going until someone had the sense to stop it, and the upperclassmen were drunk off their asses too."

"So this witness saw the whole thing and ratted them out?"

"No, actually. She was afraid. And smart. And worried. And all those things fought in her head. She was scared and she didn't have anyone to tell. But she showed up the next day at the clinic asking if one of her classmates from the boxing team was there because she was worried about a training injury. The clinic admin wouldn't have remembered her - but one of the Yellows turned up in the city hospital with a burst appendix and bruises all over."

"So - that's the one that I heard about, I guess. That really got the investigation started."

"If it hadn't been for that no one would have remembered her. But the clinic did, and the witness was summoned to the university police outpost. The police pointed out that she could be tried as an accomplice if she withheld information. Meanwhile the upper batches in the Diamond Club had found out about the leak and were all having a secret meeting trying to figure out how to get out of trouble. Eventually the police let the witness go and the administration said they'd open an investigation."

"The Diamond Club figured that if they could convince the witness not to say anything, then there wouldn't be enough evidence. This is where Jasper comes in. Jasper wasn't supposed to know this was all going on - this hadn't been campus news yet, and the 'secret meeting' was mostly between the seniors - but they asked her to come along when they went to talk to the witness. I don't know why and I don't know what Jasper knew. She was the only freshman there, because her fellow teammates were still recovering. She was the favorite, though, that much anyone knows. Maybe they'd gone easy on her during the hazing.

"So some of the boxing team and some of the swimming team and some of the basketball team seniors showed up as the witness was halfway back to the dorms, right? She's already spooked by everything - watching the hazing and not doing anything about it, hearing about the injured kid, seeing the police... It's eleven in the evening, no one's on the road, and then boom! There the seniors are, asking her to come with them. She doesn't know where they'll take her or what they're gonna do or if they're gonna kill her or what. So she runs. Anyway - someone from the clinic tipped off a friend and this friend went looking for the witness and... there was a big fight after. I was there, and I can't even tell you how it went. Then the police showed up and everyone scattered and... we ended up in the hospital."

Amethyst gets it. She tells herself she doesn't get it, but there's a reason Garnet's telling her this story, and it adds up.

"Pearl was the witness." Garnet's head turns to Amethyst, away from the can she was telling the story to.

 _She's the reason you don't have a sister!_

It's a stupid thing to think, a knee jerk reaction. But Amethyst goes cold anyway, like the ground's given way. It feels like her heart's fallen down into her stomach, or somewhere even lower. She can feel the emptiness in her hands, the need to grasp something.

 _You know why. No one ever cares enough to take you seriously._

"Jasper and Pearl... fought?"

Garnet falters. "I -"

"Jasper was the fastest boxer in our neighborhood," Amethyst says, suspended between dread and a growing fury she doesn't want to feel. "Don't fucking lie to me."

"I fought your sister. And you're right, if anyone could land a hit on Pearl it's Jasper. Amethyst -" Garnet tries to reach out, but a hand whips out and slaps her away. "Don't fucking patronize me," Amethyst yells. "Everyone's been fucking me over since I was a fucking kid!"

 _'Cos you're a runt, Amethyst, ya know that? If you were a cat, they'da drowned you._

It's been years since she's heard the Jasper of her childhood in her head. She'd buried that voice when Jasper changed. She tried, she really did.

She hates the sound of her voice when she gets like this. She hates what comes out of her mouth. She hates everything in that moment, most of all herself for being such a god damned idiot in front of - in front of Garnet Goddamn Jones, someone who hasn't even been her friend for a week and - and yet, Garnet's been more honest with Amethyst than the girl she's been sleeping with, or the girl she's been friends with since high school.

"Amethyst. AMETHYST."

Amethyst finishes flinging a chair. It doesn't fly very far, because she's not as strong as Jasper. Several other chairs have been kicked over in her fury. She breathes in and out.

"I'm sorry."

"Like hell you are."

The thing is, Garnet's sincere.

And Lapis knew. Even before Pearl must have figured out who Amethyst was, Lapis knew. Knew and she laughed it off and lied. What the hell was she thinking? Amethyst imagines punching her broody face. Selfish bitch! Lapis always thought her pain was the worst in the world.

Amethyst struggles to breathe. For the second time, she picks off Garnet's hand on her shoulder, flings the arm away, and whirls. "Don't fucking touch me!"

 _Garnet's trying to help_ is quickly overrun with _Garnet can't help you._

"Fuck this," Amethyst mutters, kicking her stuff hard enough to bounce. "Where's Lapis?"

"I'm not sure."

"Like hell you're not!" Amethyst shoves Garnet hard. "You got to talk to her, and she wouldn't even pick up the phone when I call!"

 _Looks like Lapis would sooner talk to Garnet than you, huh?_

Garnet tries to explain. "I saw her at an old teammate's house, but I don't know if she's still there. I... I told her I had to talk to you."

"Well fuck that coward," Amethyst says. She picks up her bag and walks out to the path, closer to the building. Underneath her, the ground gives way with a crunch. Her hands, feeling empty, curl into a tight ball.

"Amethyst - "

Amethyst stops, turns, and throws a right hook straight at Garnet. It only grazes Garnet's shoulder, who responds with a kick to Amethyst's shin. Amethyst falls forward towards Garnet, who rams her palms into Amethyst's shoulders till they collide with the building wall. Amethyst kicks out wildly - something connects with a thump and a pained gasp on Garnet - and this time she shoves Garnet hard enough to buy herself enough time to run like hell.

/

/

 _loser_

/

By the time she gets to Peridot, she's become oddly calm. The pain in her shin has ebbed down. The stillness of Peridot's dorm, Peridot's room, is jarring against the adrenaline still coursing through her system.

"I haven't been able to find Lapis lately," she says, still catching her breath.

"I've been bugging her myself," Peridot says, distracted by a TV show. "She's in this house with a friend of hers. Downtown. Like, stations away from here."

"And you didn't ask if she's coming back?"

"Eh, she's going to do whatever she wants to do."

"Did you get an address? I kinda have to talk to her. In person." _With my fists._

"I'm not her mom, Alonzo! Geez. It was a weird name. Like Blob or something."

"Blob," Amethyst repeats. She'd start with the swimmers. One of them would know a Blob.

"Hey," Peridot says, turning off the television. Amethyst doesn't care at this point what Peridot sees. "Are you okay?"

"`M fine," Amethyst says, but the scowl doesn't sell it.

Peridot looks at her up and down. "I'm coming with you. I haven't seen Lapis for weeks now."

/

/

They find out that this friend's name is Bloop. It's an hour and a half to her apartment, even through the fastest route. If Amethyst's silence unnerves Peridot, she doesn't say anything. Peridot gives her space, at least. Wow. That's about all Amethyst can get from anyone.

What exactly was Garnet expecting Amethyst to do after she heard the story? Cry? Demand an explanation? Break down? Or maybe Garnet hadn't thought this through. Amethyst doesn't care, really. She's been beating the shit out of Lapis in her head for the past hour.

And as for Pearl - Amethyst's done with her.

They get to the apartment. Amethyst runs up the stairs, holding onto the wrought-iron balusters, and finally they make it down a corridor.

"Hey, wait," Peridot says, realizing that there's something very wrong, "Amethyst! No, seriously, what's going on?"

Amethyst knocks. A blonde, decked from head to toe in yellow, opens the door.

"We're looking for Lapis," Peridot says.

"And who might you be?"

Peridot answers with a wheeze. "I'm her cousin!"

"Lapis never mentioned a cousin. Specially not a twerp like you."

"Well that's 'cos she's a clod and she doesn't think about other people!"

Amethyst tunes them out, trying to see if Lapis is inside. Blondie keeps trying to fill up the door, even if she's bone-thin. If Amethyst has to tackle someone to get to Lapis...

Amethyst sees blue out the corner of her eye.

It's Lapis, with a bag of groceries, having just walked up the stairs. Amethyst tackles her against the balluster. It shudders at the impact and Amethyst follows up with a punch to the face that is swatted aside. Before she can counterattack, pain blooms in her cheek followed by a solid thump of impact against her stomach. Amethyst barely feels the pain though, even when she stumbles back.

Palm on her cheek, Lapis scowls. There's a little blood coming out of her nose. "Dammit, Garnet just can't keep her mouth shut." She sidesteps out of the way as Amethyst lunges.

"W-what are you clods doing?" Amethyst's head whips to the right in pain when Lapis launches a vicious punch just above the ear. She nearly stumbles, off balance, but picks herself up before she can fall.

 _Shit!_

Lapis doesn't let up - there's a quick jab that Amethyst evades. She ducks inward and smashes a fist into Lapis's chest.

Amethyst always knew that there was more to Jasper's expulsion than what Lapis had said. But she'd trusted that Lapis had told her everything she had to know.

Shit, her head really hurts.

They go at each other over Peridot screaming at them to stop. At some point Amethyst ends up on the floor, her head cracked against the tile, her jaw smashed by a powerful jab.

And yet the pain feels good, the overwhelming, swollen pressure on her cheek and at the back of her head, the sensation of bone against her knuckles when her fists connect with Lapis's face. It feels like something is cracking, and she wants it to crack all the way through.

Lapis is saying something in between those damn punches.

"What was I supposed to tell you - " _bam!_ " - that that bitch you're sleeping with - "

Amethyst curls up at the sudden loss of pressure. Suddenly dizzy as she kneels on her arms and knees, she can hear someone screaming too far away.

She claws herself up with the help of the stairway railing. Her nose feels cracked, and she can feel her skull's every bone at each breath, crying out. Hand to her forehead, it's no surprise it's wet with blood. She's breathing in as much as she can through her mouth.

It was Peridot who'd pushed Lapis off her, trying to keep Lapis from getting up.

"Dammit, Peridot!"

"'Dammit, Peridot'?" Peridot screams. "What are you doing to her!"

Amethyst's grip on the railing tightens as a bout of lightheadedness hits her. She's never been more thankful for a rail in her life.

"Lazuli," Amethyst's voice is low, almost a murmur, but it carries in the quiet of the hallway. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Jesus, breathing through her nose is a goddamn painful mistake she can't stop doing. Every time she does it a sharp spasm of pain lances straight from her nose to her eye socket to her temple.

Lapis's face is flat on the floor, held down by Peridot's tiny hands. "I... Pearl wasn't supposed to be anything serious, right?"

Amethyst's face twitches in pain.

"Even without Pearl," Amethyst says. "Even if... nothing came of it... you were never going to tell me, were you?"

"Peridot, get off me, dammit."

"NO!"

"Amethyst - it doesn't matter -"

 _Of course it doesn't matter,_ Amethyst thinks. _It's just me, isn't it?_

Amethyst no longer has the strength to keep standing.

Down the corridor, Blondie throws up her hands. "Garnet! Do something!"

And behind Amethyst, Garnet Jones runs a hand through her hair, having just bounded up the stairs.

"Holy shit," she says.

/

/

Amethyst was too dizzy to remember much after that. Blondie and another one - Amethyst named her Bangs - picked Lapis off the floor and took her to one end of the apartment while Garnet supported Amethyst into a room. There wasn't much to take care of when it came to Lapis; without Peridot the winner would have definitely been her.

Amethyst's not gonna cry, even if she _is_ a loser.

So she doesn't say anything (except to protest at being taken to a hospital.) She tries not to move when Garnet pokes her face with antiseptic.

"I don't feel good about this," Garnet says. "Head trauma should be seen by a doctor, period."

But Amethyst rolls her eyes and mutters "Overkill." _Jasper got hit a lot all the time and did fine._ "Lapis doesn't punch that hard." It's a total lie. "Besides, Blondie and Bangs ain't worrying about it. This is too much, man." The soreness and pain makes her hyperaware of her body, every bone and torn muscle and open cut. She feels overdressed.

Heh. Overdressed.

What Amethyst really wants is a painkiller. Her hands are shaking, her knuckles are bruised and cut, her legs throb, and her torso too.

"Excuse me, Peridot?" Garnet asks. Peridot looks up from reading a bunch of prescription papers. She needs something to do, Amethyst knows. "Can you stay with Amethyst first? I need to check with the others."

The door opens and closes, the sound of it too far away.

To Peridot's credit, she doesn't blow up. She just sits on the chair across Amethyst and tries to look everywhere but Amethyst's eyes. Satisfied that she can't do a better job dressing Amethyst's face, she goes back to sitting next to Amethyst on the couch.

A little while later, Peridot asks. "Does it hurt a lot?"

"No, that's a bad question," Peridot amends. "Of course it does."

Another pause. Amethyst sinks into the couch, listening to the air con.

"You'll tell me what's wrong, right?"

"Yeah," Amethyst says.

/

/

When Amethyst wakes up, they're at a hospital. Not wanting to make a scene, she submits to a doctor's prodding. Garnet fills in the details so she doesn't have to talk so much. As for the consultation fee or whatever, Garnet says they'll talk about that after. They walk out to the parking lot, Amethyst's face somewhat numb with anasthesia.

They set off for the long ride back to university.

Half an hour later and still stuck in traffic, Amethyst speaks. "Garnet."

Garnet answers from the front. "Yeah?"

"Why'd you tell me... all that?"

"Cos no one else was going to."

"You knew i'd be pissed." It's the closest Amethyst can get to apologizing for hitting Garnet.

"Even so."

"I don't know if I should thank you for not. thanks for not lying, I guess?"

 _Thanks for letting me know everyone else just doesn't give a fuck._

The traffic lights finally turn green and they make it through the intersection. A few blocks away, merging traffic slows them down again.

"What was it like after?"

"A clusterfuck. Several students were suspended, pending the investigation. Everyone was angry - the sports teams were disqualified because of the investigation, even before the trial was settled. It was a pretty big blow. And even when the investigation revealed that several of the teams were hazing, no one wanted to believe it. The swim team had such a large following there were people saying the punishment was unfairly harsh, since it wasn't like anyone died or anything."

"So... did Pearl get into trouble?"

"That's another long story", Garnet says. "The teams split up over whether to condemn their seniors as a way to wash their hands, which was a pretty dirty tactic. When I met with - uh, some people, who knew the whole story - we were willing to use a much more visible smokescreen so that Pearl wouldn't be a target: a fourth-year medic who was there at the night when the fight broke out. We agreed that in place of mentioning Pearl's direct involvement, we'd say that we saw her - her name was Rose Quartz - instead, but keep the details vague. What people needed was a name, whatever happened to the trial."

"And this Rose just let herself be used that way?"

"Rose Quartz was always against the Diamond Club. She was Pearl's friend. To be honest, I don't know how much she knew about the hazing beforehand. She didn't want Pearl to get into trouble with the rest of the student body. Pearl was just a freshman, anyway, and Rose Quartz was a popular, well-liked senior. She could handle being put in the spotlight, she was already an activist."

That gives Amethyst to mull over: the fact that there are so many blanks still waiting to be filled in.

After a long silence, Amethyst says. "Lapis must really hate Pearl, huh."

"She doesn't have the right to," Garnet says vehemently. "And she should know that. The Diamond Club dug its own grave when it treated its freshmen like that. Pearl should never have had to suffer for what they did."

Amethyst wonders where Garnet places her sister. Is Jasper just, as Lapis said, an accident? Jasper was a freshman too, and hazed, and she still did what she was told to do by the same people who got her drunk and hit her. How the hell did that even happen?

And as for Pearl: that's something Amethyst doesn't want to think about, beyond being done with her for lying and using and being a coy little fraidy-cat bitch.

 _-end chapter-_

 _/_

 _/_

amethyst and pearl are finally in the same scene for the next chapter. i'm pretty sure everyone has expectations for that.

balancing jasper and lapis's light/dark is really tricky because i don't write in their POV (yet?) and they're not the main characters. we'll have to give the story time to share the reveals among the (pretty large) cast.

also. although the superficial details (who belonged to which Diamond) are off, i'll be honest: i wrote jasper and lapis's love story very early on, and i was really happy when the sugar lady said that lapis thinks she deserves better, but not jasper. that factors into the story somewhere. i'm a little sad that i was overtaken by canon since i love guessing, but eh.

 **Correlations to canon:**

Fight at night == outbreak (beginning) of the 'Gem war'

Jasper's disappearance == coincidentally she's gone right now in the show ;) what a stroke of luck

Split between the teams based on seniority == roughly correlates to the rebellion vs gem hierarchy

Lapis knowing a metric fuck ton more than she tells == her role as a mirror that knows all of gem history

Blondie == Yellow pearl


	9. morning

chapter 9: morning

/

/

CONCENTRATION IS THE NAME OF THE GAME

Amethyst can't concentrate on anything. Not Peridot's video games, not the breakfast she was left with (a croissant with ham and eggs), not her homework which Peridot thoughtfully carried.

Upon getting back from the hospital, Peridot had insisted that Amethyst stay with her. It couldn't be the other way around, Peridot over at Amethyst's, because Peridot had a thing about leaving her territory.

In a way, she cares.

The fact that Peridot does makes Amethyst want to leave. It makes her uncomfortable.

The lingering pain distracts her. It's pretty bad, her face, but it's not like she was a great beauty to begin with. If scrappy old Amethyst showed up with a bruise, then you whudda thunk she got into a fight and deserved it.

If someone like Pearl wore a bruise, Amethyst would bet the world would launch a campaign against the injustice. Hadn't that been proven once? Someone had leapt in to help her, Garnet said. Hadn't this Rose Quartz even offered to help Pearl stay out of trouble?

Great, even in this state she's still thinking of Pearl.

It's awful.

It's torture.

It might be her fault, even when she thinks it's not. But she's no great thinker, either, so the uncertainty eats away at her. What if she deserves this? She doesn't, she really doesn't, but considering that the constant pattern in her life is one long, unending river of suck, she might.

 _Melodrama ain't your thing, girl,_ she tells herself.

She gets up and tells herself to put something in her belly before she has to add hyperacidity to her list of pains.

/

/

Peridot returns in the early afternoon to check on her and deliver lunch.

"Aww, Peri, y'didn't have to," Amethyst says jokingly, trying to lighten the serious look on Peridot's face.

"I don't want you dead," Peridot says, and only she could say something so flippantly. "So eat."

/

/

Peridot comes back late in the evening. Amethyst has spent the whole day lounging around, unable to get up, unable to focus on anything for too long a time.

"Can't imagine how shit I look," Amethyst mutters when Peridot looks at her.

"I don't really care," Peridot says, letting her stuff down. She sits at the edge of the bed and asks Amethyst if they're going to talk over dinner.

"I'm not hungry," Amethyst replies from underneath the covers.

"Amethyst. Amethyst, you said you'd tell me."

Amethyst mumbles something that isn't coherent, even to her. Peridot gets the idea, anyway.

"IT'S NOTHING? What's that on your face? Do you have any idea how it feels, trying to get you to say something and… I can tell when I'm being dismissed, Alonzo! Don't you fucking dare. I can't even see how I'm supposed to figure out what's wrong with you!"

And from under the covers: "I'm not a computer! Sometimes people just don't do…whatever it is computers do." It helped that she wasn't looking at Peridot. It would be too much.

Peridot huffs. "I know you're not a computer," Peridot's voice is softer now, and slower, "but I don't know how to help… humans! People! I don't know!"

"You don't have to."

There was a long, pregnant pause. Amethyst felt Peridot sitting down on the sofa, just brushing her blanketed feet. "I think I do. I think I have to. If that human is you. And you're not okay. And I just let it happen and I didn't notice."

From under the sheets, Amethyst makes a decision to peek out. It's worse than she expected: Peridot looks worried, and she never looks like that towards another person. Amethyst feels unworthy of that look. It's too serious.

"I'll be okay," she says.

Peridot groans. Amethyst goes back to hiding under the sheets. If she gives Peridot a hard time she'll feel guilty. But if she talks, she'll still feel guilty. And it's not like Peridot's an expert in listening to people problems.

"Okay, okay. Feed me," Amethyst manages to say. "We'll talk during dinner."

/

/

It's not a perfect solution. Feeding herself is still painful. Actually doing things (like getting dressed out of the pajamas she's been wearing all day) is painful. She has to not bend her one elbow so much because somehow Lapis managed to twist her forearm. It's not an overwhelming kind of pain, just the kind of pain that makes her slow. Peridot says nothing, though.

At the shared dorm kitchen, Peridot lays down takeout: good Chinese takeout.

"You went all the way to M House?"

"It's not that far."

"Correction. You went all the way to M House on your tiny un-exercised legs."

"I did," Peridot says. "Just eat it already!"

When their bowls are empty, Peridot steeples her fingers and lays her chin to rest. Eyes narrowed, she can go back to her old routine with Amethyst. "You have been witholding information from me," she scolds.

Amethyst doesn't know where to start. She stares into the cheap vinyl tablecloth for a while, exhaling and inhaling, trying to figure out what to say. Eventually, Peridot prods her again. "What's going on with Lapis?"

"She lied about Pearl," Amethyst says. That's as good a starting point as any. "They knew each other."

"Stop, stop," Peridot says, her words grating on Ame's ears. "Does this have something to do with Jasper?"

"Yeah," Amethyst says.

"No wonder you're like this," Peridot mutters.

"S'cuse me?"

"You always get so jumpy when it comes to her," Peridot says.

"Well I did kind of lose my sister," Amethyst growls.

"But Lapis said Jasper was a jerk to everyone when she was younger."

"Just a jerk?" Amethyst snorts. "I never thought Lapis would go that easy on Jasper."

But after a pause, she says, "Jasper cleaned up, y'know, after our dad left." It was still something Amethyst felt torn over. She couldn't tell if she forgave Jasper because of it. Sometimes she was still angry at Jasper. There was never an apology to bridge the bully Jasper had used to be, with the sister she became. And it wasn't hard to believe that underneath it all, Jasper hadn't really changed. Beating someone into shutting up was right up her alley.

"Earth to Amethyst?"

"Yeah."

"So what's the connection?"

"Pearl was one of the witnesses," (now that Amethyst thinks about it, wouldn't Pearl be _the_ main witness? But she hadn't asked Garnet about what happened after.) "With the uh, the boxing team. Jasper tried to shut her up. Like, beat the shit out of her. That's what got Jasper expelled."

"Holy shit," Peridot says. Her chin's slipped off her fingers. "Holy fuck," she says. "Holy crap."

"Yeah," Amethyst says.

"Man, that is fucked up. Why the fuck didn't Lapis say anything?"

"Don't know," Amethyst says. "Garnet mentioned something about everyone swearing to hush it up, I just… don't want to deal with Garnet right now. She's cool, she's… she's decent, y'know? I just don't want to ask anymore."

She gives Peridot a general recap: that neither Pearl nor Lapis were going to talk about Jasper, that it had been Garnet to spill the beans, that she'd gone after Lapis for answers, and Peridot knew how that turned out.

"And Pearl?"

"Is sitting pretty somewhere, I got no fucking idea."

"I mean," Peridot says, "I mean… what happened to you guys? I thought you had a great trip with her…"

She never told Peridot the whole story. Telling Peridot would have required admitting it out loud. Admitting that she'd been fucked over, that she'd been played. Admitting that she'd fallen – fallen and tripped for nothing. This didn't happen to Jasper. Jasper did not get fucked: she fucked people over. Therefore it didn't happen to Amethyst. Therefore it could never happen to Amethyst.

Amethyst looks up at Peridot. Reminds herself that Jasper is no longer here. "Nah, we just fucked, we didn't… " she sighed.

"You didn't talk to her."

"She didn't talk to me," Amethyst corrects, not sure if Peridot understood, really, how bone-tired she was. All of a sudden her forearm whined in protest over every small movement she made; all of a sudden she had a headache; all of a sudden her face hurt. The bright lights in the kitchen annoyed her, as though the only place she ever wanted to talk about this was in the dark, where she could deny the whole thing after.

"I… I'm sorry," Peridot says. Amethyst sees her eyes moving left and right, trying to compute the lines between what Amethyst has said. "She knew who you were, right? And she didn't… say anything? What the hell?"

After a long pause, the air filling up with all the things Amethyst should say, she finally admits it: "That's not really it, though," Amethyst opens, staring at the vinyl tablecloth.

Wait, is she really gonna tell Peridot how dumb she is? Like, really, fucking, dumbass-level stupid? "Nah," she says, after a mild jolt of pain reminds her of all the shit she's been through, "Jasper's got nothing to do with…" _us_?

Amethyst almost laughs in bitterness. "Pearl's been a fucking mess without all that crap on the side. She totally can't stop drinking and, oh, fuckin' around even when I –" Amethyst trails off, asking herself why she let Pearl drink to begin with, that last, stupid night with her, "fuck, it's just not fair, y'know? We talked about trying something –" She looks up to Peridot, who's got this look of intense concentration on her face, like Amethyst is a crazy weird puzzle in a game – "It's fucking stupid, okay? I just wanted things to work."

That was it. Something about Pearl had made Amethyst want to believe, against all evidence in the planet, that relationships were a thing that happened, that they worked out sometimes. It was such a bad joke, the worst kind, and Amethyst was angry at herself for falling for a goddamn fairy tale. Pearl had said one thing and done another. Hell, she did just about anything except what they agreed to do when they talked that morning so long ago. And every time Amethyst thought about how much she'd wanted Pearl and all the stupid things in her head to happen (like Pearl sticking around for the morning after) it felt like getting slapped in the face constantly.

Pearl had made Amethyst want to talk about all sorts of stupid things she wouldn't want to talk to anyone else about, something about her that made Amethyst content to study for class and do boring, ordinary shit like groceries.

"I know it's fuckin' stupid, Peri."

Getting judged by that robot is gonna sting.

It's dumb beyond belief that Amethyst had met someone and somehow, that someone had made her want to spill her guts all over the fucking floor.

Peridot's still trying to piece together everything Amethyst is saying. It's painful to watch; Amethyst can't help but go back to staring at the dinner table. All that anger always leaves her drained, one step away from an old, childish habit of crying out of frustration.

She ought to spare Peridot the brain cells. "There ain't nothing to understand. She sold a pretty good fuck and said some bullshit and that's it. Kinda lame, I know."

She doesn't want Peridot's _this is why we don't do relationships_ face. She doesn't want to feel any more dumb or ashamed or any number of things she's been feeling in and out.

When she finally looks up, it's to see Peridot staring back at her. "I don't get all of it," Peridot says slowly, her eyes swishing around as she measures what to say, "when I see you talk about her, you… like her, Amethyst." She says this carefully, trying not to step over how Amethyst feels, her eyes finally resting on Amethyst. "You like her a lot. But she isn't even a friend." Peridot flicks a finger idly at a resting chopstick, tapping at it until it falls off the bowl. "She hasn't done anything to deserve you and you haven't done anything to deserve the crap you feel. And what the fuck, I never want to see you and Lapis go at each other like that over some shit in the past! I don't know what Pearl _is_ , I don't get her, and you don't get her, and… I don't know, I've never been so confused about people except for that time when Lapis was dating Jasper and I had no idea what she _saw_ in-in another human. I never knew Jasper," Peridot says quickly. "Just… I never saw how a relationship – any relationship – could ever make sense. And I don't know what you see in Pearl. And I guess I'm just not the kind of person who could understand. I just know I don't want to see you like this. I can't – I can't help you," Peridot says, frustrated. "Give me your hand."

Amethyst lays it down on the table, a little gingerly. Peridot reaches for it and squeezes it. "The evidence doesn't lie. Pearl isn't your friend."

"Yeah, Sherlock, she's bad for me, I know it." Amethyst says, but she didn't know it, really, not until someone else had told her.

/

/

I'M SORRY

A week passes by. Amethyst has to explain herself to more people than she expected; it's nice, but also a downer. The first time Jenny asks, she doesn't know how to answer, how much to say, how much to hide. So the press release is that she had a huge fight with Lapis, but when pressed over what, she can't answer.

"I don't know," she says, her cheek pressed against the gross cafeteria table. She's too tired to sit up and look at the Cool Kids across the table. "A lot of stupid shit in the past," she says. "All in the goddamn past." She doesn't actually know if she says the last sentence or just something she thought of in her head.

Someone pats her head. "Take it easy, bro," Buck Dewey says.

"Yeah, yeah," Amethyst says. "I'm cool."

/

/

A few days later, just before they go off to sleep, Peridot asks: "Hey Amethyst?"

"Yeah what?"

"Your sister beat up your ex."

(Ex? Not really accurate. 'Not-ex'? But that sounds too awkward.) "Yeah."

"That's all sorts of fucked up."

"Yeah."

Amethyst spares Peridot from having to ask the question. "Jasper just keeps fucking me over, even when she's gone. Wish I could punch her. Ask her what her damage is, because… I dunno, why'd she just… slide back down like that?"

"…Sorry."

"Not your fault."

"Wonder how that felt once she found out who you were."

"Ah, y'mean Pearl? She probably just drank something and forgot about it. Or she needed me way too much for a fuck and tried not to think about it."

That level of desperation ought to make Pearl beneath her, right?

"…That's gross. What did you like about her, anyway?"

"Thought you said you weren't interested in stuff like that."

Amethyst can hear Peridot huff across the room, in the dark. "I – I want to understand," Peridot grumbles.

 _She wants to understand._ That is so unlike Peridot. Or is it? Peridot's always been curious. Just not usually towards people.

Amethyst inhales, looking into the dark of the room. When she closes her eyes, she can see Pearl's lean back, the angles of her body, her short hair sticking out in tufts. She has the craziest, most sky-blue eyes Amethyst has ever seen in her life. And Amethyst can remember how Pearl smells.

"She smelled really good," Amethyst mumbles, remembering the nights she put her mouth on Pearl's shoulder, working the skin there till she made it to Pearl's neck, breathing Pearl in. Pearl had been desperate enough for a fuck to overlook who Amethyst was. Maybe Amethyst can say she isn't that pathetic, but she comes pretty close, because her body still remembers Pearl.

"That's just perfume. Every other girl has that."

Amethyst laughs at Peridot's unintended douse of water. Anytime Amethyst heats up thinking about Pearl, Peridot just has to ruin it.

"Geez Peri, it's not just perfume." What it is, Amethyst can't describe. Just that Pearl smelled so good. Even when she got Pearl worked up to a sweat, she still liked breathing Pearl in. There was something reassuring about Pearl when she passed out after a long night, the perfume barely there.

"Then it's sweat," Peridot replies smartly. "Which all humans do. Are you saying you like her for something so basic? Perfume is just good grooming."

"Yeah, well, after hanging out with you, I guess any girl would have uh, 'good grooming,'" Amethyst says. "… That was just a joke, Peridot."

Peridot hums from her bed.

"I dunno," Amethyst says. "She's smart, y'know. And her hair is soft." _Listen to yourself. Do you want to rip her to shreds or…? Jesus._ "And when she gets excited about something… I like that. When we talk, I mean, when it's school stuff, she won't let the subject go until she thinks I've got it. I got _accounting_ right 'cos of her, y'know?"

"I could have helped you with that," Peridot says.

"You'd've made a huge deal out of it, dork," Amethyst says. When it came to school, Pearl didn't make her feel stupid. Oh no, Pearl just made her feel stupid about everything _else_. "Y'know what's really sad?"

"What?"

"I don't know much about her. I mean, it's not like a month or two is really gonna make a difference," Amethyst says. "But I didn't know she was in the fencing team. Garnet made it sound like it was such a big deal to her. I don't know what she likes. I mean, she likes cars, she likes books, she likes school, duh, but… that's it."

"You know anything she doesn't like?"

The strangest thought comes into Amethyst's head: _Pearl can't stand herself._

But it's not that strange, is it? Amethyst knows what it's like to fool around in search of a distraction: she and Pearl have that in common. The only reason Amethyst hadn't realized that sooner was because she'd been so sure Pearl's life was perfect.

She sits up in the dark, turning over the implications in her head.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," Amethyst says.

Yeah, she and Pearl aren't that far off the mark from each other.

/

/

EXCUSES, EXCUSES

There are things Amethyst should be thinking about, such as the whole story behind Pearl and Garnet and Lapis and her sister. But even after a week has passed, she doesn't want to talk to Garnet about the rest of it, and no plan to track down whatever hole Lapis has disappeared to. She doesn't even want to ask about Blondie and Bangs from the mysterious apartment downtown.

So she goes to school, bumbles through an explanation about her bumps and bruises, insists that her beef with Lapis doesn't need an intervention, and troops through her coursework. In the evenings when she wants extra motivation she goes to the Warehouse, where the art students are allowed to hang out till eleven in the evening. That's what's written on the sign anyway but desperate students (kicked out of their dorms by their roommates) can also climb any of the trees surrounding the Warehouse to enter through the second floor. They can't turn on the lights close to the windows but there are partitions inside that are lit way beyond eleven p.m. Kids careless enough to get caught are banned for a month, their faces plastered next to the sign at the entrance.

There are only two sacred rules in the Warehouse: no one rats on anyone sneaking in late into the night, and no one fucks or parties because dude, it's not cool to do that when there are sleep-deprived artists around you.

Two weeks after her fight with Lapis, on a Friday night she'd normally spend having fun, Amethyst paints away. Oil isn't her medium but it's better than sitting in Peridot's dorm room listening to Peridot shout at the screen. She just wants to be alone with a beer and something to work on – especially now that she can move without wincing. There's a quiet rhythm to making something, a groove that Amethyst didn't mind trading her dancing for.

That steady groove skids to a halt when Pearl pokes her nose into the room Amethyst is in.

Pearl fuckin' Watterson waltzes back into her life smack-dab in the middle of… in the middle of oil painting on sacred land. She doesn't go any further than the threshold of the room and the corridor, but Amethyst is offended at the bitch who didn't even ask.

Pearl doesn't say anything, but her being there is already as loud as yelling from outside. Amethyst has half a mind to get off her stool and throw Pearl off the second floor balcony, but she picks up an empty beer can and hurls it at Pearl. It _pwings!_ off Pearl's head. Pearl just sits there and takes it. The can rattles off the floor and bounces a few times until it rolls away.

In that moment, Amethyst gets Pearl.

She could punch Pearl, sure. But Pearl's just gonna take it, Amethyst knows. She's gonna take it and use it to make herself feel less bad. There's a flare up of white-hot anger within Amethyst, but it doesn't last. They were never gonna work, not with the way they were, and honestly, Jasper was just a drop in a bucket full of other problems.

"You're twisted as fuck, y'know that? And don't fucking come in," Amethyst says when Pearl's leg twitches. "Just fuckin' stay where you are." Amethyst isn't alone in the building but it doesn't matter if anyone can hear her.

"You want me to hit you," Amethyst says. "That's what you came here for. That is fucked up, man," she says. "You just use everyone around you to make yourself feel less shitty. You gotta drag someone else down. Hope you're not about to say something about Jasper," Amethyst says. "But you probably think I'm that dumb, huh?"

"No," Pearl says. "Though I was going to talk about her that last time. Along with – other things."

"Except you didn't, like all the other times you could have talked to me and didn't."

Pearl rests her head against the doorway. "I didn't. That's on me. I'm sorry."

"Nah, Pearl, you're not really, y'know, apologetic or any of that crap," Amethyst says. "You're just sorry Garnet busted you."

"That is _not_ true. It's not easy to talk about it, okay? You think I like being like this?"

"Am I supposed to give you a free pass 'cos you hate yourself?"

That shuts Pearl up. Whatever she came here for, it sure as hell wasn't to hear that out of Amethyst's mouth. Not that saying it makes Amethyst happy. It's a painful thing to realize, in a woman she can't deny an attraction for. She's saying it to hurt, but it feels like she's hurting herself three times over, in saying it, and in thinking it, and in realizing she can't help how fucked up Pearl is.

"What are you here for, anyway?"

She can tell the plans are all knocked out of Pearl's head after that last damning sentence.

"Well I…" Pearl says quietly, "I can't beg, and I don't deserve another chance, and… you've made it clear how I totally disgust you," she says. "I get it. I just want you to know that I'm sorry for a lot of things, and I'm sorry about Jasper, and I'm sorry about lying. I'm sorry I didn't say anything. I just couldn't do it. I didn't want you to think any less of me."

"Not interested in your excuses, dude. Just go, man. I get it." Amethyst waves a hand. "Bye, 'kay?"

Amethyst stares at the floor, waiting for Pearl's shadow to slink away. She waits until she can't hear Pearl's footsteps. She goes back to staring at what she's drawing. She doesn't want to shred the canvas with a palette knife, that'd be too stereotypical. She tries prodding it with a knife, anyway, but the canvas doesn't give. She pokes around until all that's left is a smudge of colors everywhere.

"That's enough," she tells herself. "Better not waste another goddamn canvas."

/

/

 _chapter end_

/

/

 _"Open for business" says it all; you can't go wrong_

 _Is innocent too immature where you're from?_

 _Tell me that you want me_

 _Tell me that you want it all_

\- Phoenix, _Trying to be Cool_

Author's Notes and Outtakes For This Chapter:

Plot twist, area nerd insists on being a robot, is actually one of the most human characters in the story.

I don't think it takes three guesses for you guys to figure out who I'm talking about…?

Amethyst: I'M TOO COOL FOR FEELINGS BRO

Me: You wanna bet?

Additionally:

Garnet: You can't! You lied to me! You need to learn that there are consequences to your actions!

vs

Amethyst: "Am I supposed to give you a free pass 'cos you hate yourself?"

Garnet: I don't want to hear your excuses!

vs

Amethyst: "Not interested in your excuses, dude."

you can check my tumblr for updates: ateliersockpuppet dot tumblr dotcom


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